fME    BORDER LA 
KAISER  ^ 


P  O   U   L  T    N    E    Y 
B    I    C   E    L  O  W. 


RIVERSIDE 


/^'^. 


c. 


^. . 


Jy^.^^•^^'»•«(l■.^'^■ 


GERMAN    CUIRASSIERS 


THE    BORDERLAND 


OF 


Czar  and  Kaiser 


NOTES  FROM  BOTH  SIDES  (IF 


The   Russian   Frontier 


BY 


PQULTNEY    BIGELOW 


ILLUSTRATED    BY    FREDERIC    REMINGTON 


NEW    YORK 

HARPER    &    BROTH  IC  R  S    PUBLISHERS 

1895 


Copyright,  1894,  by  Harper  &  Brothers. 

All  rights  reserved. 


TO 
GEORGE    KENNAN 

nty  dear  Kentian, —  Yott  have  travelled  Siberia  at  the  risk  of  your  life, 
ami  pitblislied  the  truth  without  malice. 

This  dedication  is /or  the  benefit  of  the  few  who  still  gjtestiou  yoitr  state- 
ments.    I  tried  to  do  so  once,  and  became.         Your  sincere  fir  lend, 

POULTNBY    BiGELOW 
Chelsea  Eiiibankiiient,  London 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

IN    THE    BARRACKS    OF    THE    CZAR I 

WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA 49 

THE    RUSSIAN    AND    HIS    JEW 98 

SIDE    LIGHTS    ON    THE    GERMAN    SOLDIER         .       .       .  131 

EMPEROR    William's    stud-farm    and   hunting 

FOREST       .       . .  195 

ON    A    RUSSIAN    FARM .  237 

PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA 268 

RUSSIFICATION 306 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

GERMAN    CUIRASSIERS Frontispiece 

RUSSIAN    INFANTRYMAN I 

ADVANCE   OF   RUSSIAN    INFANTRY 5 

A   BOLD    DRAGOON 9 

"DRAGOONS,  mount!" 13 

ONE  OF  THE   CZAR's   BODY-GUARD I? 

SHOEING  COSSACK   HORSES 21 

COSSACKS   SCOUTING 2$ 

THE   soldier's   SONG  . 29 

A   HAIR-CUT   IN   A   CAVALRY-STABLE 33 

KUBAN   COSSACK,  IMPERIAL   GUARD   CORPS  ....*..  37 

THE   RUSSIAN    MILITARY    GENDARME 4I 

ONE   OF  THE  CZAr'S   PIRATES 45 

THE  THIRD   SECTION   AT  WORK 5 1 

"I   THOUGHT  I   HEARD   YOU   SAY,   'COME   IN  !' "  .      .      .       .  57 

IN  THE  CAFE  TOMBOFF 61 

A    GENDARME   IN   WARSAW 67 

SCENE   IN   A    POLISH    VILLAGE •       •  73 

GENDARME,   ST.   PETERSBURG 81 

"TWO   OFFICERS   ARE  WATCHING   YOU  " 87 

A    PAGE   OF   SKETCHES   MADE   ON  THE   NIEMEN      .       .       .       .  9I 

THE   FRONTIER   GUARD   AND   THE   CUSTOM-HOUSE      ...  95 

A   RUSSIAN  JEW 98 

JEWS   AT   A   PEASANT   MARKET IO5 

SMUGGLERS    ON   THE   FRONTIER Ill 

JEWISH     SMUGGLERS     AND     REFUGEES    IN    THE     HANDS    OF 

THE   DRAGOONS Iig 


VI  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

JEWISH    RECRUITS 1 25 

CAPTAIN    ZINNOWITZ I31 

ORAGOON    OKFICEU    IN    SIKKKT    DRESS I33 

CUIRASSIER • 137 

A    HEAVY    SWELL — GUARD    HUSSAR I4I 

A    STUDY    IN    SOCIOLOGY    IN    BERLIN 14c, 

THE   OLD   GENERAL I49 

THE  "sub" 153 

UHLAN    OFFICER    IN    FIELD    TRIM I57 

THE   officers'    MESS 161 

FIELD    DRILL   OF    PRUSSIAN    INFANTRY 165 

AN   OFFICER   OF   ARTILLERY 169 

HUSSARS   SCOUTING I73 

AN   OFFICER   OF   DRAGOONS   IN   THE   FIELD 176 

CAVALRYMAN    WATERING    HIS    HORSE I77 

A   JOLLY    PARTY    1!Y    THE    WAYSIDE 181 

A   DRAGOON   TRUMPETER        185 

CUIRASSIER   ON   STAFF   DUTY 187 

TYPES   OF   PRUSSIAN   OFFICERS I9O-I9I 

MOUNTED   HUSSAR I93 

ON  THE   ROAD   TO  TRAKEHNEN I95 

COLTS   PLAYING  NEAR  A   HERD I97 

MASSAGE  OF  A   COLT'S   KNEES 20I 

A  "  TRAKEHNER  "  HORSE-WRANGLER 203 

BRINGING   OUT   A   STALLION 207 

THE  RIDE  THROUGH  THE  WOOD  WITH  THE  OLD  FORESTER   211 

ARREST   OF  A   POACHER   IN   THE   FOREST 215 

PEASANTS   NEAR   ROMINTEN 219 

GERMAN   PEASANT,  EAST   PRUSSIA 222 

DEER  AT   ROMINTEN 224 

THE   emperor's    HUNTING-L0D(-,E  . 227 

A   FORESTER .  23 1 

A   STALLION 235 


THE    BORDERLAND 

OF 

CZAR    AND    KAISER 


IN   THE  CZAR'S   BARRACKS 


Y  friend  Chumski,  in  the 
fatigue  uniform  of  the 
170th  Infantry  Regiment, 
met  me  at  the  station 
somewhere  between  Kasan 
and  Moscow.  He  threw 
both  arms  about  me,  kissed 
me  affectionately,  led  me 
to  a  carriage  drawn  by  a 
pair  of  lively  Arabs,  and 
whirled  me  off  to  his  quar- 
ters. Chumski  is  of  Polish 
extraction,  and  commands 
the  best  regiment  in  Rus- 
sia. This  needs  explana- 
tion, for  it  is  well  known 
that  no  Pole  can  rise  be- 
yond the  grade  of  a  captain 
unless  he  becomes  so  Rus- 


2  THE    RORDKRLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

sified  in  name,  lanijuagc,  and  religion  as  to 
pass  for  a  good  orthodox  Slav.  But  Colonel 
Chumski  is  a  rare  man.  His  nationality  has 
kept  him  from  being  a  general,  or  commanding 
a  regiment  of  the  guards,  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  his  achievements  in  war  have  been  so 
uniformly  brilliant,  the  troops  under  him  have 
shown  such  perfection  of  training,  that  when  a 
Russian  officer  wants  to  compliment  his  men  he 
can  only  say,  "  You  are  good  enough  for  Chum- 
ski's  regiment."  The  men  of  the  170th  all  love 
Chumski  —  first  and  foremost,  because  he  docs 
not  steal.  It  seems  odd  to  lay  stress  on  this 
point,  but  to  the  private  it  makes  all  the  differ- 
ence in  the  world  whether  the  regimental  fund  is 
spent  on  good  food,  or  whether  the  colonel  takes 
it  with  him  to  the  card-table.  Then,  too,  Chum- 
ski has  spent  much  of  his  life  in  real  war.  He 
fought  the  campaign  against  Turkistan  in  1867; 
in  1870  he  helped  at  Samarcand ;  he  was  at 
Khiva  in  the  campaign  of  1873;  at  Khokan  in 
1875  and  1876;  then  in  the  great  war  against 
Turkey  of  1877  and  1878.  From  that  time  down 
to  the  expedition  to  Penjdeh,  in  1885,  he  was 
always  in  harness,  fighting  British  interests  in  the 
far  East,  and  learning  the  art  of  war  in  the  best 
of  all  schools. 

Said  he  to  me  once  :  "  Do  you  know  why  Rus- 
sia is  so  successful  in  her  far  Eastern  warfare? 
It    is    because    she    sends   out    there,    not   her 


IN    THE    BARRACKS    OF    THE    CZAR  3 

stupid  Russians,  but  the  quick-witted  Poles,  and 
others  like  them,  whom  she  suspects  of  having 
'ideas.'  The  Russian  officers  serve  in  Poland, 
the  Polish  officers  on  the  Caspian  and  other 
remote  posts,  from  which  they  could  not  return 
in  time  to  help  their  country  people  in  case  of  a 
revolution.  That  is  true  also  of  the  privates,  but 
not  to  so  great  an  extent." 

Speaking  of  ideas,  reminds  me  that  recently  in 
Moscow  a  school-teacher  asked  a  little  girl  to 
define  the  word  idea.  The  child  answered, 
naively,  "  An  idea  is  what  is  opposed  to  the 
government !" 

Chumski  did  not  tell  me,  for  he  is  a  modest 
man,  that  the  reason  he  was  ordered  to  duty 
near  the  capital  was  that  the  government  need- 
ed sadly  men  of  his  capacity  to  help  get  the 
army  in  fighting  condition.  (It  may  be  as  well 
to  add  here,  in  parenthesis,  that  I  am  concealing 
every  detail  that  can  identify  my  friend.) 

I  was  pining  for  sleep  when  I  arrived,  and 
therefore,  after  a  cup  of  cofTee  and  a  roll,  lay 
down  on  a  couch  and  was  soon  sound  asleep. 
When  I  awoke,  after  a  couple  of  hours,  three 
soldiers  stood  at  the  foot  of  my  bed,  motionless 
and  silent.  At  first,  with  the  sleep  fog  veiling 
my  faculties,  they  appeared  agents  of  the  Third 
Section  demanding  my  passports,  and  I  have  a 
confused  idea  of  shuddering  with  the  suspicion, 
"  What  if  Chumski  has   been  ordered  to  arrest 


4  THE    HORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

me!"  But  after  rubbing  my  eyes  the  situation 
clears  up  cheerfully.  A  Cossack  is  there  with 
my  mount ;  he  is  to  escort  me  to  the  drill-ground. 
The  two  orderlies  are  to  help  me  dress.  One 
holds  a  basin,  the  other  pours  out  water  upon 
my  hands  in  a  manner  that  reminded  me  of 
China.  After  a  scanty  wash,  they  help  me  into 
my  riding  breeches  and  boots  with  a  dexterity 
suggesting  that  the  colonel  himself  looked  upon 
dressing  and  undressing  as  eminent!)-  work  for 
servants.  At  the  door  stood  a  four-year-old 
Cossack  horse  with  training-lines  as  well  as  a 
curb  rein  ;  he  was  a  beautiful  animal,  full  of  fire, 
a  trifle  larger  than  usual,  and  vastly  better  bred 
than  those  one  sees  in  the  troop.  Chumski  did 
me  great  honor  in  allowing  me  to  ride  this 
precious  beast  that  was  destined  to  serve  as  his 
best  charger,  and  I  was  highly  flattered,  for  it 
presupposed  that  he  had  formed  a  fair  opinion  of 
my  horsemanship  when  we  last  rode  together  in 
the  Peloponnesus.  We  mounted  without  loss  of 
time,  I  signalled  my  Cossack  to  act  as  guide,  and 
away  we  dashed  at  a  gallop  over  the  market- 
place, amid  peasants,  pottery,  and  cabbages, 
clattering  across  the  long  bridge  over  the  Volga, 
and  out  into  the  open  countr)\  The  Cossack  and 
his  horse  were  as  one,  but  something  like  a 
clever  nurse  and  a  spoiled  child.  Each  under- 
stands and  loves  the  other,  but  neither  com- 
pletely under  control.      My  orderly  did  not  want 


IN    THE    BARRACKS    OF    THE    CZAR  7 

his  horse  to  be  a  slave,  and  recognized  perfectly 
that  horses,  like  children,  have  their  whims  and 
humors,  and  must  be  coaxed  and  reasoned  with, 
but  rarely  punished.  The  morning  was  fresh, 
our  mounts  also.  They  capered  and  danced  and 
bounded  from  side  to  side,  and  acted  as  only 
horses  can  act  whose  masters  have  an  excellent 
seat,  light  hands,  and  an  indulgent  disposition. 
The  German  troop  horse  is  more  perfectly 
trained,  more  steady  ;  one  may  say  that  he  re- 
sembles the  German  scholar  in  being  thoroughly 
reliable,  but  rarely  brilliant.  No  cavalry  horse 
approaches  the  German  in  the  qualities  demanded 
for  that  branch  of  the  service,  as  no  students,  the 
world  over,  equal  those  of  Germany  in  power  and 
perseverance.  I  was  speaking  of  our  mounts 
only  as  pleasant  saddle-horses  for  an  individual. 
My  saddle,  too,  the  regular  troop  saddle,  was 
comfortable — more  so  than  that  of  the  German 
cavalry,  but  by  no  means  so  light  or  useful  as 
the  McClellan  saddle  of  our  service. 

After  half  an  hour's  ride  we  reached  a  level 
space,  three  sides  of  which  were  flanked  by  two- 
story  buildings  —  the  barracks  of  the  regiment. 
Colonel  Chumski  asked  if  I  would  like  to  inspect 
his  regiment,  which,  of  course,  I  was  very  glad  to 
do.  We  rode  together  between  their  lines,  and 
I  had  abundant  proof  that  the  men  were  sound 
and  well  cared  for.  They  were  then  put  through 
a  series  of  tactical  evolutions,  which    they  per- 


8  THE    P.ORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

formed  as  well  as  any  guard  regiment  I  have 
ever  seen,  after  which  the  band  broke  into  a 
march,  and  we  had  a  little  review,  first  by  com- 
pany and  then  by  battalion  front.  The  men 
were  in  campaign  outfit,  and  made  a  most  ex- 
cellent impression  on  me.  When  a  company 
preserved  a  particularly  correct  line,  the  colonel 
called  to  them  an  acknowledgment  in  Russian, 
upon  which  the  whole  company  burst  into  a  roar, 
which  was  to  me  unintelligible,  but  which  Chum- 
ski  said  was  a  vote  of  thanks  from  the  men. 
When  a  line  displeased  him  he  did  not  conceal 
his  opinion  of  their  performance,  and  the  slovenly 
men  were  promptly  berated  by  their  officers;  in 
one  instance  it  seemed  tome  that  a  man  received 
a  blow  on  his  cheek  from  the  officer's  sword 
guard.  In  any  other  regiment  -I  should  have 
noted  a  dozen  blows.  When  the  review  was  over, 
the  colonel  gave  the  signal,  and  the  whole  regi- 
ment started  at  the  height  of  its  speed,  each 
man  for  himself,  all  rushing  to  quarters,  not  in 
a  perfunctory  quickstep,  but  so  violently  as  to 
suggest  that  some  great  reward  was  awaiting 
each  man  at  the  end  of  his  journey.  As  they 
rushed,  they  burst  into  a  hurrah  that  sounded 
like  the  roar  of  the  ocean  on  a  coral  reef. 

When  the  rush  had  passed  away,  and  we  stood 
alone,  I  told  him  that  I  was  amazed  at  the  ex- 
cellence of  his  regiment,  and  wished  to  see  what 
the  men  could  do  individually.     Accordingly  an 


A    lioI.D    DRACOON 


IN    THE    BARRACKS    OF    THE    CZAR  II 

order  was  given,  and  in  a  few  minutes  out 
marched  a  company  in  full  campaign  kit,  carry- 
ing, however,  not  the  real  rifle,  but  one  entirely 
of  wood,  I  was  now  treated  to  an  obstacle 
race,  in  which  the  field  consisted  of  one  company 
of  the  170th.  The  course  was  about  half  a  mile 
long,  and  in  covering  that  distance  the  men  had 
to  jump  into  ditches  six  feet  deep,  climb  up 
steep  banks  twelve  feet  high,  crawl  under  beams, 
vault  bars,  pass  a  stream  by  walking  along  a 
narrow  plank,  leap  hurdles,  and  finally  scale 
a  smooth  plank  wall  about  eight  feet  high  by 
vaulting  over  its  top.  To  follow  the  rapidly 
shifting  movements  of  these  one  hundred  men 
was  as  difficult  as  watching  a  circus  with  three 
rings  going  at  once,  and  when  the  last  man  had 
finished  the  course,  and  the  company  formed  in 
line  before  us,  my  eyes  still  danced  with  a  pano- 
rama of  legs  and  arms  gyrating  over  parapets 
and  lofty  beams.  Chumski  said  something  to 
the  men,  and  was  immediately  answered  by  a 
unanimous  roar.     I  asked  him  what  it  all  meant. 

"  Nothing,"  he  said.  "  I  only  told  them  they 
had  done  well,  and  they  answered  that  they  were 
glad  to  earn  the  colonel's  approbation. 

"  You  see,"  said  he,  "  I  have  lived  a  great  deal 
with  soldiers  when  real  war  was  going  on,  and  I 
know  that  the  soldier  is  a  child.  You  know  that 
children  like  a  kind  word  now  and  then ;  they 
like   to   be  patted  on  the  head  ;  they  like  to  be 


12  THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

admired  ;  that  encourages  them.  Very  well ;  so 
it  is  with  my  men.  They  like  me  to  admire  and 
praise  them ;  and  they  work  very  much  better 
when  I  treat  them  as  a  father  docs  a  child.  Of 
course  I  punish  them  too,  for  I  must  have  disci- 
pline." 

What  struck  me  particularly  about  Chumski's 
troops  was  the  enthusiasm  with  which  they  did 
their  work.  They  took  their  obstacles  as  though 
participants  in  an  athletic  contest. 

The  men  of  this  regiment  wore  boots  that 
reached  almost  to  the  knees,  green  trousers 
tucked  in  loosely,  and  a  round  green  forage-cap 
similar  to  that  in  the  German  army.  Their  tunic 
was  not  of  green  cloth,  such  as  they  wear  in  cold 
weather,  but  simply  of  coarse  unbleached  linen, 
sitting  snug  around  the  throat  and  falling  to  the 
cuff  when  the  hand  is  at  the  man's  side.  It  is  a 
loose  and  comfortable  garment  for  gymnastic  ex- 
ercise. I  admired  it  later,  when  some  of  the 
regiment  gave  us  an  exhibition  of  military  row- 
ing. Their  knapsacks  were  fastened  on  by  two 
straps  coming  over  the  shoulders  and  fastening 
at  the  belt,  thus  not  only  relieving  the  weight  be- 
hind, but  relieving  also  that  of  the  two  cartridge- 
belts  which  hang  at  the  belt  in  front.  In  gen- 
eral, all  their  equipment  is  copied  from  German 
models,  and  in  war-time  I  can  imagine  many  a 
blunder  caused  by  mistaking  German  for  Russian 
troops,  particularly  when  the  mist  hangs  over  the 


IN    THE    BARRACKS    OF    THE    CZAR  15 

meadows  in  the  early  ''morning.  This  applies 
only  when  the  undress  cap  is  worn.  The  Russian 
infantry  head-piece  is  a  round  woolly  hat,  only 
high  enough  to  clear  the  crown  of  the  man's 
head,  flat  on  top,  with  no  rim  or  peak,  and 
adorned  in  front  with  a  brass  double-headed 
eagle.  The  German's  helmet  seems  to  me  bet- 
ter, in  that  it  affords  ventilation  in  hot  weather, 
and  sheds  the  rain  from  a  man's  neck.  It  also 
shields  the  eyes  from  the  sun,  if  that  be  an  ad- 
vantage. The  difference  between  the  helmet 
and  the  woolly  hat  is  practically  the  only  one 
that  separates  the  great  body  of  Russian  infantry 
from  that  of  Germany. 

"Shall  we  take  a  look  at  the  barracks?"  sug- 
gested the  colonel.  "  Nothing  would  suit  me  bet- 
ter," I  answered  ;  so  leaving  our  horses  in  charge 
of  the  Cossack,  Chumski  led  the  way  through  a 
series  of  vast  spaces  occupied  mainly  by  little 
wooden  beds.  Each  little  bed  had  on  it  a  hard 
mattress,  a  pillow,  and  a  coarse  woollen  blanket. 
Beneath  each  bed  was  a  box,  in  which  the  sol- 
dier's kit  was  kept,  and  at  short  intervals  through- 
out the  buildings  were  chromo  portraits  of  the 
czar,  and  very  gaudy  pictures  of  Russian  saints. 
The  barracks  were  entirely  of  wood,  the  ceilings 
low,  and  the  windows  infrequent,  yet  so  clean 
was  everything  kept  that  I  detected  no  disagree- 
able odor.  In  the  kitchen  I  helped  myself  to  a 
taste  of  the  soup  that  was  simmering  in  vast  cal- 


1 6  THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

drons  over  the  brick  oven,  and  made  up  my  mind 
that  I  could  stand  a  pretty  long  canoe  cruise  if 
my  food  were  no  worse  than  this.  There  are  two 
fast-days  in  the  week — Wednesday  and  Friday — 
and  this  was  one  of  them,  so  that  all  they  had 
was  lentil  soup.  Black  bread  went  with  the 
soup — not  such  very  bad  bread  either.  They 
had  a  drink  that  suggested  the  mead  we  use  at 
harvest-time,  consisting  of  water  in  which  rye 
bread  has  been  absorbed.  Of  this  I  drank  a 
whole  glass  with  relish.  So  far,  then,  I  had 
stumbled  on  nothing  about  the  Russian  soldier's 
life  that  would  have  discouraged  me  from  enlist- 
ing had  I  been  brought  up  to  accept  the  czar's 
word  as  law. 

"  Do  you  have  much  desertion  ?"  I  asked. 

"  Not  many  in  my  regiment,"  answered  the 
colonel,  with  complacency;  "my  men  are  pretty 
well  cared  for. 

"■  But,"  said  he,  "  the  Jews  have  rather  a  rough 
time  of  it.  I  have  about  a  hundred  of  them  in 
this  regiment,  and  they  do  their  work  as  well  as 
any  of  them.  In  most  cases,  however,  they  are 
exposed  to  much  insult  and  brutality.  Some- 
times the  soldiers  beat  them  unmercifully,  and  it 
is  no  wonder  that  they  try  to  desert.  The  rough 
peasant  has  a  traditional  hatred  of  the  Jew,  and 
if  the  officers  of  the  regiment  are  not  energetic  in 
setting  their  faces  against  it,  there  is  pretty  sure 
to  be  some  deviltry  against  them.     The  Russian 


ONE  OF  THE   CZAR  S   BODY-GUARD 


IN    THE    BARRACKS    OF    THE    CZAR  19 

peasant  finds  it  delightful  to  get  even  with  the 
man  whom  he  looks  upon  as  the  author  of  all  his 
ills." 

In  the  twenty-seven  "  governments  "  making  up 
the  western  frontier  of  Russia,  ten  of  which  con- 
stitute Poland,  the  Jews  are  very  much  crowded 
together.  In  1874  Russia  followed  Germany  in 
adopting  the  principle  of  universal  military  ser- 
vice, and  consequently  forcing  Jews  into  the 
army.  The  government  has  only  published  the 
statistics  of  desertion  between  1876  and  1883, 
and  for  these  years  the  number  of  Jew  deserters 
in  those  districts  amounted  to  a  round  90,000 
men.  The  government  ceased  then  to  publish 
such  figures,  but  it  is  estimated  that  the  number 
of  Jews  to-day  who  have  run  away  from  their 
regiments,  or  at  least  have  failed  to  appear  after 
passing  the  necessary  physical  tests,  and  after 
being  ordered  out — that  this  number  is  at  least 
1 50,000. 

As  we  galloped  home  to  the  noon-day  dinner, 
I  noticed  that  my  colonel  greeted  the  men  of 
other  regiments  than  his  own  by  merely  conform- 
ing to  the  usual  military  requirements  ;  but  when 
he  met  any  of  his  170th,  he  shouted  out  a  hearty 
good-day  to  them,  which  they  answered  with  a 
burst  of  strange  sound  intended  to  convey  the 
notion,  "  we  are  glad  to  have  our  colonel's  greet- 
ing." This  struck  me  as  a  very  pleasant  inter- 
change of  civility — much  better  than  the  silent 


20  THE    RORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

and  perfunctory  ordeal  in  \oguc  among  Western 
armies.  In  the  German  army  the  Emperor  still 
greets  his  Grenadier  Guards  by  a  hearty  "  Good- 
morning,"  and  is  answered  as  heartily  as  in  Rus- 
sia ;  but  this  is  in  Germany  as  historically  unique 
as  the  "  beef-eaters  "  at  the  Tower  of  London. 
In  Russia  the  life  of  the  people  is  what  it  was  in 
England  when  Queen  Bess  boxed  the  ears  of  her 
favorites  —  an  odd  medley  of  barbarism  and  pa- 
rental gentleness. 

Colonel  Chumski  made  a  splendid  dinner  in 
my  honor.  When  he  embraced  me  at  our  fare- 
well meeting  in  the  shadow  of  Mars  Hill,  he 
promised  me  all  sorts  of  good  things  in  case  I 
came  to  Russia,  and  he  more  than  kept  his  word. 
Half  a  dozen  of  his  officers  were  present,  most 
of  them  with  either  German  or  Polish  names, 
and  half  of  them  speaking  either  French  or  Ger- 
man. Three  orderlies  in  top-boots  and  linen 
tunics  served  us  with  a  series  of  luxuries,  com- 
mencing with  a  variety  of  cold  relishes,  such 
as  caviare,  pickled  salmon,  anchovy,  cucumber, 
chopped  egg,  and  several  kinds  of  native  whiskey. 
The  courses  succeeded  each  other  as  with  us,  but 
as  regards  wine,  pretty  much  the  whole  table 
was  covered  with  bottles  of  choice  brands  from 
Madeira,  the  Crimea,  Tokay,  Bordeaux — every- 
where but  the  Rhine.  The  host  was  a  generous 
toast-master,  and  acted  on  the  principle  that  the 
guest  who  left  his  table  sober  went  away  unsatis- 


IN    THE    BARRACKS    OF    THE    CZAR  23 

fied.  Personally,  I  am  almost  a  total  abstainer, 
and  had  some  difficulty  in  finishing  the  meal 
without  hurting  the  susceptibilities  of  my  kind 
friends.  There  were  a  great  many  toasts  offered, 
and  much  good  feeling  displayed,  all  of  which  is 
now  merged  in  the  memory  of  a  pleasant  meet- 
ing. After  dinner  we  adjourned  into  the  colonel's 
reception-room,  in  which  were  two  great  divans, 
on  which  we  sat  cross-legged,  after  the  inanner 
of  Turks,  smoked,  chatted,  and  sipped  coffee,  pre- 
pared after  the  manner  of  the  lower  Danube  and 
the  East  generally. 

The  colonel  was  very  communicative  now, 
though  he  was  not  reticent  before.  I  attached 
some  importance  to  his  opinion,  because  he  had 
not  only  seen  his  own  troops  in  different  cam- 
paigns, but  knew  European  troops  as  well. 

"  That's  a  fine  fellow,  that  Cossack,"  said  I. 

"  Yes,"  answered  Chumski ;  "  the  best  stuff  we 
have.  Pity  we  have  not  more."  After  his  other 
guests  had  retired,  he  took  up  the  subject  once 
more,  and  said ;  "  The  Russian  is  a  poor  horse- 
man, and  drill  cannot  make  a  cavalryman. 
Horses  are  cheap  and  abundant,  yet  we  never 
ride  unless  we  are  forced  to.  The  Cossack  is 
otherwise  ;  he  loves  his  horse,  he  is  full  of  re- 
sources, and  is  worth  all  the  rest  of  the  cavalry 
put  together.  Our  cavalry  of  the  guard  is  very 
showy  and  well  trained,  but  I  prefer  the  Cossack 
for  my  purposes." 


24  THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

Of  the  guard  cavalry  there  is  very  httle  that 
corresponds  to  Chumski's  description,  however. 
The  so-called  Chevalier  Garde  corresponds  to 
the  famous  Lifeguards  of  London,  who  attract 
all  the  nursery -maids  of  St.  James  and  White- 
hall when  they  solemnly  move  in  and  out  of 
their  strange  sentry-boxes.  They  wear  a  double- 
headed  silver  eagle  perched  with  outspread  wings 
over  a'  gilded  helmet ;  have  gilded  breastplate, 
blue-gray  trousers,  and  enormous  boots.  On  fes- 
tive occasions  their  tunic  is  white,  but  ordinarily 
dark  green.  Li  the  whole  Russian  army  there  are, 
^however,  only  four  cuirassier  regiments,  and  these 
are  all  stationed,  for  parade  purposes,  in  or  near 
the  capital.  Then  there  are  two  regiments  of 
hussars,  similar  to  the  German,  one  red  and  the 
other  green,  and  two  regiments  of  uhlans,  also 
easily  mistaken  for  German.  These  are  the  only 
cavalry'  regiments  that  are  showy  and  at  the  same 
time  strikingly  like  those  of  Germany.  The  bulk 
of  the  Russian,  as  of  the  American  cavalry,  is 
composed  of  dragoons,  who  wear  a  peculiar  head- 
piece, part  fur,  part  cloth,  with  the  metal  double 
eagle  at  the  front,  readily  distinguishable  from 
the  fur  hat  of  the  Cossack,  which  does  not  show 
so  much  fur  in  front.  The  fifty  odd  dragoon  reg- 
iments of  the  Russian  army,  like  ours,  expect  to 
fight  afoot  as  well  as  in  the  saddle ;  are  drilled 
to  attack  in  masses,  but  at  the  same  time  do 
their  best  to  emulate  the  peculiar  virtues  of  the 


IN    THE    BARRACKS    OF    THE    CZAR  27 

Cossack.  Remington  and  I  passed  two  squad- 
rons of  these  dragoons  quartered  in  a  string  of 
dirty  peasant  huts,  about  fiv^e  miles  from  the 
Prussian  frontier.  Their  horses  were  excellent 
in  build  and  condition,  and  the  men  looked  like 
good  rough-and-ready  skirmishers,  but  there  was 
no  ground  near  the  place  where  any  other  tactics 
could  have  been  practised  save  dismounting  and 
attacking  from  behind  trees.  This  explains,  per- 
haps, why  to-day  so  much  of  the  cavalry  in  Po- 
land is  composed  of  material  which,  in  Germany, 
would  be  considered  fit  only  for  scouting. 

"You  Americans  like  rough-and-ready  fight- 
ing," said  the  colonel,  "  and  I  will  show  you  some 
this  afternoon,  if  you  like  a  hard  ride."  This  was 
delightful.  The  wine  had  evidently  made  him 
confiding  as  well  as  communicative.  He  clapped 
his  hands,  ordered  horses,  took  a  last  glass  of 
vodka,  and  in  a  few  moments  we  were  clattering 
out  into  the  lonesome  country,  with  the  Cossack 
orderly  behind. 

There  is  nothing  much  sadder  than  Russia,  and 
Remington's  reference  to  it  once  as  "  the  sad 
gray  land  "  seemed  more  and  more  apt  the  more 
I  saw  of  this  mournful  empire.  I  have  seen  it  in 
the  merry  harvest-time  and  again  in  early  June, 
the  seasons  when  the  rest  of  the  world  does  most 
of  its  smiling  and  singing.  The  Russian  peas- 
ants that  have  crossed  my  path,  whether  on  the 
Black  Sea  or  the  Baltic,  in  St.  Petersburg  or  the 


28  THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

great  Minsk  Swamp,  have  struck  me  as  being 
peculiarly  like  neglected  cattle,  having  "  neither 
pride  of  ancestry  nor  hope  of  posterity;"  they 
look  like  people  who  have  no  change  of  clothing, 
and  care  for  none ;  who  are  so  attached  to  the 
soil  that  they  like  it  even  next  to  the  skin  ;  their 
dress  takes  the  color  of  the  land  they  till,  and 
when  Russian  peasants  stop  in  the  lields  to  rest, 
the  color  blends  with  the  surrounding  feat- 
ures as  does  that  of  a  partridge  in  a  field  of 
stubble. 

My  meditations  were  disturbed  by  the  sound 
of  rifle-firing.  "What  is  that?"  I  asked.  "Our 
scouts,"  answered  the  colonel.  "  Follow  me," 
and  he  led  the  way  as  rapidly  as  practicable  off 
the  main  road  in  the  direction  of  the  sound  we 
had  heard.  At  first  it  was  difficult  moving,  ow- 
ing to  the  branches  and  underbrush,  but  soon  we 
struck  a  forest  trail,  and  went  ahead  at  a  good 
trot.  A  cheer  greeted  our  ears,  and  we  soon  af- 
terwards came  upon  twenty  soldiers,  in  command 
of  Lieutenant  Schiitzenberg,  busily  occupied  in 
taking  the  insides  out  of  a  brown  bear,  prepara- 
tory to  carrying  him  off  with  them.  A  sapling 
was  cut  down  and  trimmed  of  its  branches,  and 
on  this  Bruin  was  swung.  The  green  -  coated 
scouts  then  tramped  off  into  the  woods  in  the 
opposite  direction  from  that  in  which  we  had 
come.  Soon  I  noticed,  here  and  there  between 
the  trees,  single  figures  of  soldiers  who  surround- 


IN    THE    BARRACKS    OF    THE    CZAR  31 

ed  the  little  column  at  a  distance,  in  order  to 
give  warning  in  case  of  danger. 

Lieutenant  Schiitzenberg  saluted  the  colonel , 
we  dismounted  and  walked  with  him  behind  the 
bear- carriers,  while  I  learned  from  their  com- 
mander something  of  this  operation. 

In  the  German  army  every  soldier  is  taught  to 
act  intelligently  on  outpost  service  and  in  scout- 
ing operations,  and  this  is  not  too  much  to  re- 
quire in  a  country  where  every  soldier  reads  and 
writes,  and  can  readily  understand  a  map  and 
compass.  In  Russia,  however,  where  nine-tenths 
of  the  people  cannot  read  or  write,  and  have  lost 
the  faculty  of  thinking  consecutively,  the  army 
cannot  teach  the  soldier  much  more  than  to 
move  as  with  a  machine.  In  order  to  have  a 
force  of  good  men  for  picket-work  and  advance- 
skirmishing,  they  have  adopted  this  plan  : 

Each  company  sends  four  of  its  most  intelli- 
gent men  to  a  select  body  called  the  scouting- 
corps,  and  as  the  Russian  regiment  has  four  bat- 
talions, with  four  companies  each,  that  gives  a 
regimental  scout  force  of  sixty-four.  This  ser- 
vice is  very  popular,  for  it  is  full  of  variety,  and 
though  the  hardship  is  great,  the  food  is  good, 
for  hunting  and  fishing  arc  in  the  programme. 
The  men  are  practised  in  every  kind  of  wood- 
craft, and  are  expected  to  develop  as  much  in- 
genuity and  self-reliance  as  an  Indian  scout  in 
our  service.     They  must  sail,  row,  swim,  climb, 


32  THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

find  their  way  by  map  and  compass,  slip  through 
the  enemy's  lines,  procure  every  variety  of  infor- 
mation, and  escape  capture  at  all  hazards. 

"  They  are  splendid  fellows,"  said  Schiitzen- 
berg,  in  answer  to  a  question  of  mine.  "  Here  is 
what  they  did  last  winter  when  snow  was  on  the 
ground  and  floating  ice  in  the  streams: 

"  You  must  know  that  we  attach  very  great 
importance  to  creeping  up  close  to  the  enemy 
and  watching  his  movements.  Well,  for  a  little 
practice  in  this  respect  I  called  my  sixty -four 
men  together  one  morning  in  the  barrack-)-ard, 
and  divided  them  into  two  sides,  each  com- 
manded by  non-commissioned  officers.  I  pointed 
out  on  the  map  a  position  which  one  side  was  to 
watch,  and  indicated  the  direction  from  which  an 
attack  was  to  be  anticipated.  Another  position 
I  selected  for  the  other  side.  Neither  side  knew 
what  the  other  side  was  to  attempt,  but  each  had 
orders  to  slip  behind  the  lines  of  the  other,  and 
steal  three  flags  that  had  been  posted  about  a 
mile  and  a  half  in  the  rear  of  the  line  that  was  to 
be  protected.  The  difficult  part  of  the  problem 
was  that  neither  side  knew  anything  of  the  posi- 
tions beyond  what  was  shown  them  on  the  map 
in  the  barrack-yard,  and  the  non-commissioned 
officers  had  to  transmit  this  knowledge  to  their 
men. 

"  Each  party  found  the  right  position,  and  after 
posting  sentry,  detached  a  party  to  steal  the  flags 


IN    THE    BARRACKS    OF    THE    CZAR  35 

of  the  enemy.  Six  men  of  the  one  party  went 
off,  each  on  his  own  account.  Two  of  them 
were  captured,  one  of  them  failed  to  find  the 
flags  because  he  could  not  remember  the  topog- 
raphy of  the  map,  and  one  succeeded  in  finding 
the  flags  and  bringing  them  back  to  the  non- 
commissioned officer.  The  remaining  two  found 
the  spot  after  the  flags  were  gone,  and  described 
it,  so  that  there  was  no  doubt  that  they  had 
been  there.  The  six  men  detailed  on  the  other 
side  for  the  work  remained  together,  and  were 
discovered  when  close  to  the  picket  line.  They 
were  fired  upon;  two  were  captured,  and  the 
remaining  four  pursued  to  a  stream  forty  feet 
wide  near  here.  In  spite  of  the  floating  ice,  tliey 
sprang  in  and  struggled  to  the  other  side.  The 
pursuers  hesitated  a  moment  at  the  sight  of  the 
ice -blocks,  then  they  followed.  One  was  capt- 
ured in  the  water  because  he  was  hampered  by 
the  ice.  The  rest  escaped  ;  but  one  of  the  fol- 
lowers managed,  in  spite  of  his  ice  bath,  to  sneak 
away  with  the  flags  of  the  enemy. 

"  They  are  invaluable  to  us,"  said  Schiit/.en- 
berg,  enthusiastically ;  "  and  for  our  country  as 
good  as  cavalry  when  it  comes  to  reconnoissancc. 
For  what  can  cavalry  do  in  forest  and  swamp  and 
on  boggy  roads  ? 

"  Last  summer  a  scout  corps  of  the  6th  Oren- 
burg Cossacks  covered  in  two  months  1800  vcrsts 
(a  verst  is  about  five-sixths  of  a  mile),  most  of 


36  lllE    llORDEKLAND    OK    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

the  distance  being  rough  country,  without  roads 
of  any  kind,  over  glaciers  and  across  rapid 
streams.  This  was  the  famous  Pamir  expedition, 
from  which  the  scout  corjxs  returned  in  excellent 
health. 

"  Pamir  is  close  to  the  British  India  line,"  add- 
ed Schiitzenberg,  with  a  sly  wink,  "and  we  are 
constantly  sending  out  '  scientific  '  expeditions 
to  explore  the  borders  of  our  uncertain  neigh- 
bors." 

The  so-called  scientific  expeditions  of  Russia 
are,  as  is  well  known,  only  so  in  name.  They 
are  merely  military  reconnoissances,  with  just 
enough  science  about  them  to  bring  back  to 
the  war  department  a  rough  idea  of  what  the 
territory  would  be  worth  if  annexed  to  the 
empire. 

Pretty  soon  our  conversation  was  interrupted 
by  shouts  behind  us,  and  a  dozen  of  the  scout 
corps  came  crashing  through  the  thicket  in  hot 
pursuit  of  those  who  had  shot  the  bear.  Tlieir 
top-boots  were  coated  with  mud,  and  for  that 
matter  they  nearly  all  showed  that  they  had  done 
some  heavy  floundering  in  the  swamp.  They 
carried  their  rifles  like  practised  hunters,  and  fol- 
lowed the  enemy  with  energy,  hoping  to  capture 
some  of  them  before  they  reached  the  Volga. 
We  let  them  pass,  then  followed  in  their  wake. 
I  was  thoroughly  roused.  It  seemed  as  though 
I  was  taking  part  in  a  most  exciting  game  ;  and 


KUIiAN    COSSACK,    IMPERIAL    CUAKI)    CORPS. 


IN    THE    BARRACKS    OF    THE    CZAR  39 

for  that  matter  there  was  a  huge  stake  in  this 
race — namely,  the  big  brown  bear  ;  for  the  win- 
ners would  most  certainly  bag  the  bear.  On  we 
went,  crashing  through  the  underbrush,  flounder- 
ing in  swamp,  now  and  then  getting  a  trot  on 
hard  bottom.  The  pursuers  showed  excellent 
grit,  and  that  rare  quality  designated  by  Rem- 
ington as  "  sporting  blood."  But  they  lost  the 
stake,  for  when  we  emerged  on  the  river-bank  we 
saw  the  other  party  sailing  away  home  in  a  big 
boat — in  fact,  they  were  already  skiiTning  their 
booty.  When  they  saw  their  discomfited  pursu- 
ers they  set  up  a  roar  of  triumphant  cheering, 
which  fell  on  our  ears  as  the  news  of  a  great 
calamity.  There  was  a  great  feast  in  the  regi- 
ment that  night,  and  the  big  brown  bear  disap- 
peared under  many  savory  disguises  and  amid 
many  bottles  of  excellent  wine.  The  skin  was 
presented  to  me  by  the  colonel  of  the  regiment 
amid  most  friendly  expressions,  and  will  always 
remind  me  of  several  sturdy  Russian  soldiers, 
who  made  me  for  a  time  forget  that  I  was  under 
police  supervision. 

As  we  rode  home  towards  evening  I  asked  the 
colonel  a  little  in  detail  about  the  Russian  scout 
corps. 

"  Here  is  an  outfit,"  said  he  :  "  A  sail-boat  with 
2  masts,  holding  i8  people;  2  row-boats,  each 
holding  a  dozen  ;  5  bicycles,  10  heavy  sporting- 
rifles,   10  compasses,  20  pairs  of  snow-shoes,  30 


40  THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

pairs  of  skates,  a  large  fishing-net,  and  good  win- 
ter outfit  for  64  men." 

"Do  you  call  that  your  museum?"  I  asked, 
"  or  am  I  to  understand  that  you  give  your  scout 
company  a  thorough  all-round  athletic  train- 
ing?" 

"  This  regiment  does  not  run  a  nuiseum,"  an- 
swered the  colonel.  "  Far  from  it.  Every  arti- 
cle I  have  enumerated  represents  a  means  of 
special  training.  To-day  the  sporting-rifles,  com- 
passes, maps,  and  boats  were  practised.  We  do 
a  great  deal  of  sailing  and  rowing,  for  a  good 
sailor  makes  a  good  rough-and-ready  man  at  any- 
thing. When  the  roads  are  good,  we  practise 
despatch-carrying  on  bic)xles. 

"Then  we  have  splendid  fishing  all  about  here, 
and  in  a  campaign  men  should  know  how  to  pro- 
vide for  their  mess.  In  winter  we  track  on  snow- 
shoes,  and  skate  wherever  possible.  But  bear- 
hunting  is,  after  all,  the  main  sport.  My  men 
learn  more  at  bear-hunting  than  in  the  barrack- 
yard,  and  when  I  command  troops  I  always  look 
to  my  bear-hunters." 

Of  course  the  training  which  the  scout  corps 
gets  varies  with  the  climate  and  the  ph}-sical  nat- 
ure of  the  country.  Every  regiment  has  not  the 
water  needful  for  its  navy,  and  skating  cannot  be 
indulged  in  towards  the  South.  But  the  princi- 
ple of  instruction  is  the  same,  whether  in  Fin- 
land or  Turkistan,  Poland  or  Siberia.    The  scout 


THE    RUSSIAN    Mil.lTAKV    GENDARME 


IN    THE    BARRACKS    OF    THE    CZAR  43 

corps  devotes  itself  to  every  form  of  athletic  ex- 
ercise that  can  make  its  men  valuable  in  a  scout- 
ing campaign,  and  that  can  give  it  the  special 
education  that  will  enable  it  to  support  itself 
when  separate  from  its  base. 

"  European  people  are  so  conceited,"  said 
Chumski,  "  that  they  do  not  know  what  we  are 
doing  in  the  midst  of  this  stagnant  population 
of  peasants.  The  scout  company  of  sixty-four 
men  that  I  have  here  is  just  the  sort  of  stuff  that 
General  Sherman  could  have  appreciated  in  his 
famous  march  to  the  sea  ;  it  is  just  the  stuff  that 
made  the  famous  march  from  Boston  to  Quebec 
in  the  winter  of  1775  and  '76;  it  is  just  the  stuff 
that  Napoleon  should  have  had  in  i8i2,when  he 
tried  to  march  half  a  million  men  from  Paris  to 
Moscow." 

As  we  walked  our  horses  slowly  homeward  in 
the  twilight  after  our  pretty  stiff  day's  work,  we 
caught  now  and  then  on  the  still  air  the  sound  of 
men  chanting  in  unison,  then  the  tramp,  tramp 
of  soldiers,  and  finally  the  gray  outline  of  a  com- 
pany of  the  170th,  who  were  taking  their  regu- 
lar evening  outing  before  retiring  to  bed.  The 
colonel  gave  them  a  hearty  good -evening ;  the 
singing  stopped,  and  instead  came  a  series  of 
shouts  that  burst  in  unison  with  the  marching 
time,  and  meant  that  the  men  returned  the 
compliment.  Then  the  melancholy  song  once 
more  commenced,  and  the  gray  column  disap- 


44  I'HE    HORDHRLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISKR 

pearcd    in    the    cUisty    dimness    of    the    setting 
sun. 

Chumski  roused  me  from  my  brooding  by  say- 
ing :  "  I  think  that  Russia  has  the  simplest  and 
most  useful  field  uniform  in  Europe;  much  more 
so  than  Germany.  The  emperor  Alexander  III. 
introduced  a  complete  change  in  the  uniforming 
of  our  men — first,  out  of  economy  ;  secondly,  in 
order  to  make  the  national  costume  more  popu- 
lar. Green  is  our  national  color,  as  blue  is  that 
of  Germany,  and  red  that  of  England.  Our  na- 
tional green  is  seen  not  only  on  the  backs  and 
heads  of  all  our  infantry,  but  on  the  trousers  as 
well,  the  only  other  color  being  the  distinguish- 
ing bits  at  the  shoulder  and  collar  and  cap  band 
to  mark  regiments  or  ranks." 

One  exception  I  had  noted  at  the  Roumanian 
border,  and  again  on  that  of  Lithuania,  the  ever- 
watchful  frontier  patrol,  which  is  distinguished 
from  the  rest  of  the  army  by  having  gray-blue 
trousers,  a  double  row  of  brass  buttons  down  the 
front,  and  only  one  cartridge-box  at  the  belt 
instead  of  two.  I  took  a  good  look  at  those  fel- 
lows when  I  first  met  them,  and  shall  not  soon 
forget  them. 

"  Buttons  are  a  nuisance,"  said  the  colonel. 
"  They  have  to  be  cleaned,  they  wear  away  the 
cloth,  they  are  heavy,  they  attract  the  attention 
of  the  enemy.  Our  infantry  has  abolished  them 
everywhere  but  on  the  frontier  patrol,  and  there 


ONE     OF     TIIK     czar's     I'l  KATES 
rroiii  a  sketch  m:\t\r  in  Si.  IVIershurg 


IN    THE    BARRACKS    OF    THE    CZAR  47 

they  still  remain,  I  suppose  because  those  fellows 
do  police  duty,  and  must  look  impressive.  Our 
tunic  folds  over  the  breast,  and  is  fastened  by 
five  hooks  and  eyes  that  are  not  seen  and  do  not 
catch  in  everything.  The  Germans  are  too  fond 
of  show.  They  should  have  discarded  buttons 
long  ago. 

"  Our  cavalry  has  more  latitude  in  matter  of 
uniform,  yet  the  great  bulk  of  it  are  dragoons 
who  wear  green  coats,  green  caps,  and  gray-blue 
trousers  something  like  those  of  the  United 
States  army.  The  Astrakhan  Cossack,  the  Don 
Cossack,  the  Ural  Cossack  —  these  are  all  blue, 
and  there  are  a  few  more  varying  uniforms,  but 
taking  the  whole  army  there  is  very  little  differ- 
ence between  the  men  of  one  corps  and  those  of 
another.  The  artillery,  engineers,  scouts,  all 
wear  the  complete  green  dress,  and  their  over- 
coat is  the  historic  gray,  very  loose,  very  long, 
very  warm.  People  outside  have  an  idea  that 
we  have  a  horde  of  gorgeous,  barbarous  cavalry 
in  theatrical  dross.  This  is  a  mistake.  They  arc 
barbarous  enough,  I  admit,  but  their  uniform  is 
now  pretty  tame  everywhere.  The  emperor 
still  keeps  his  so-called  body-guard  or  imperial 
escort  in  a  native  savage  dress,  with  high  fur  hat, 
red  or  brown  coat,  with  cartridge-cases  across 
the  chest. 

"  The  Kuban  Cossacks  are  like  them,  with  hor- 
rible knives  in  their  belt,  a  rifle  in  a  shaggy  fur 


48  THK    UORDEKLAND    Ol'"    CZAR    AND    K.AISKR 

case  strun<^  over  their  shoulder,  and  a  s^encral  ap- 
pearance of  ha\'in<;  just  come  from  some  butcher- 
ing^ expedition  in  central  Asia." 

Remini^ton  and  I  noted  a  number  of  those 
fellows  about  St.  Petersburi^.  and  made  up  our 
minds  that  between  nihilists  and  Amoor  Cos- 
sacks we  preferred  the  nihilists.  If  the  President 
of  the  United  States  should  invite  a  band  of 
Apaches  to  constitute  his  body-guard,  we  might 
get  some  notion  of  the  incongruity  as  it  struck 
us  in  St.  Petersburg. 


WHY   WE   LEFT   RUSSIA 


IT  was  on  the  railway  between  Alcxandrowo 
and  Warsaw.  Remini:^ton  and  I  had  secured 
a  compartment  to  ourselves,  and  were  looking  for- 
ward to  a  comfortable  rest,  stretched  each  upon 
a  soft  seat.  We  were  on  the  "  express,"  which 
in  Russia  means  a  train  that  does  not  carry  cat- 
tle, and  occasionally  attains  a  speed  of  twenty- 
five  miles  an  hour.  Shortly  after  leaving  the 
German  frontier  a  tall  bearded  official,  wearing 
an  Astrakhan  hat,  loose  trousers  tucked  into  long 
boots,  and  a  tunic  belted  at  the  waist,  threw 
open  our  door  with  startling  swiftness.  He  stood 
still  for  a  moment,  observing  us  intently  ;  then 
consulted  a  piece  of  paper  he  held  in  his  hand, 
looked  once  more  keenly  at  me,  then  turned  and 
said  a  few  words  to  a  similarly  dressed  man  be- 
hind him,  who  had  been  hidden  from  us  by  the 
door  of  the  compartment,  but  who  now  came 
forward  and  assisted  in  the  scrutiny. 

Under  the  circumstances  we  could  not  but  re- 
gard their  behavior  as  an  act  of  impertinence,  for 
each  of  us  bore  a  document  technically  known  as 


50  THE    BORDERLANn    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

"  special  passport,"  issued  by  our  government 
only  to  accredited  agents  and  such  as  are  partic- 
ularly vouched  for.  This  document  was  signed 
by  the  ex-Secretary  of  State  James  G.  Blaine  on 
March  4,  1892,  and  was  a  request  "to  permit  [the 
bearer]  to  pass  freely  without  let  or  molestation, 
and  to  extend  to  him  all  such  friendly  aid  and  pro- 
tection as  would  be  extended  to  like  citizens  of  for- 
eign governments  resorting  to  the  United  States." 

I  had  also  a  second  passport  with  me,  which 
included  my  wife.  That  was,  however,  only  the 
ordinary  passport,  which  invoked  not  fricnd/y  aid 
and  protection,  but  simply  "lawful  aid  and  pro- 
tection." 

As  the  bearded  official  continued  his  scrutiny, 
we  sought  to  pretend  indifference,  and  handed 
our  tickets,  which  were  accepted  in  a  mechanical 
manner.  The  door  was  slammed,  and  we  were 
once  more  alone. 

Neither  of  us  relished  the  episode,  iox  we  were 
travelling  on  a  legitimate  errand,  and  had  taken 
special  pains  to  establish  our  identity  in  the 
proper  quarters.  The  United  States  government 
had  commissioned  me  to  make  a  report  upon  the 
best  means  of  protecting  our  sea -coast  against 
the  ravages  of  wind  and  waves,  and  my  orders 
were  to  note  particularly  what  had  been  done 
along  the  sandy  shores  of  the  Baltic,  where  the 
conditions  suggest  very  strongly  our  shores  of 
Long  Island  and  New  Jersey. 


■IIIK    rillKI)    SKCTION    AT    WORK 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA  53 

"  What  do  you  suppose  that  fellow  wanted  of 
us  ?"  queried  Remington. 

"  A  ruble,"  said  I  ;  "  and  we've  got  the  best  of 
him ;"  with  which  comprehensive  answer  I  began 
to  roll  my  jacket  up  for  a  pillow, 

"  That  won't  do,"  said  Remington,  after  a 
pause.  *'  That  fellow  with  the  beard  had  more 
than  a  ruble's  worth  of  scowl  on  him.  He  was 
comparing  you  with  his  paper.  You've  grown  a 
beard  since  your  last  passport." 

"  That's  none  of  his  business,"  I  answered. 

To  be  sure,  I  had  grow^n  a  beard  during  the 
winter,  because  I  had  torn  a  finger  to  pieces  while 
experimenting  with  a  cog-wheel.  But  I  could 
not  see  why  the  police  should  care  about  that. 

"  At  any  rate,"  continued  Remington,  with  em- 
phasis, "  that  fellow  with  the  beard  is  going  to 
make  us  trouble.  I  feel  it  down  in  my  bones.  I 
don't  mind  being  shot,  but  I  do  hate  sitting  still 
in  prison.     Good-night." 


II 

The  train  rumbled  into  Warsaw.  Remington 
and  I  handed  our  valises  to  the  porter  of  the 
hotel,  but,  instead  of  taking  the  omnibus  or  cab, 
slipped  out  through  the  crowd,  and,  with  the  aid 
of  a  map,  strolled  about  the  streets  to  take  a  look 
at  the  town  before  reporting  at  the  hotel. 


54  IHE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

In  Paris  I  had  made  the  acquaintance  of  a 
very  intelhgcnt  PoHsh  landed  proprietor,  and 
had  promised  to  look  him  up.  The  address  he 
had  given  me  in  Warsaw  was  that  of  a  German 
chemist  in  a  large  drug-shop.  I  was  to  ask  for 
Mr.  X.,  and  introduce  myself — the  rest  I  was  to 
leave  to  him. 

This  seemed  an  odd  way  of  accomplishing  a 
simple  and  innocent  visit,  but  there  was  no  other. 
We  entered  the  drug-store;  pretended  to  need  a 
tooth-brush;  asked  casually  for  Mr.  X.;  he  ap- 
peared from  a  back  room  ;  I  pretended  to  want 
something  chemical,  and  when  out  of  ear- shot, 
asked  after  my  friend.  The  manner  of  Mr.  X. 
immediately  changed ;  he  took  me  into  his  back 
room,  leaving  Remington  to  inspect  tooth-brush- 
es, and  after  satisfying  himself  that  I  was  the 
party  I  pretended  to  be,  said,  anxiously, 

"  Have  you  been  to  your  hotel  yet?" 

I  said  no. 

"  That  is  right,"  said  he,  somewhat  relieved. 
"  Are  you  sure  that  no  one  has  tracked  you  from 
the  station  to  this  door?" 

I  told  him  how  we  had  disposed  of  our  lug- 
gage, how  we  had  slipped  through  the  crowd, 
and  expressed  the  opinion  that  if  any  one  had 
kept  an  eye  on  us  during  the  railway  journey,  he 
certainly  could  not  have  followed  us  to  his  door 
without  our  knowledge. 

"  You  did  well,"  he   said,  "  but  still  you   had 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA 


55 


better  not  call  on  Mr.  Zerowski,"  for  that  was 
my  friend's  name.  "  You  had  better  go  to 
your  liotel  now,  for  if  you  stay  longer  away, 
it  will  excite  suspicion.  Say  nothing  while  a 
servant  is  in  the  room.  If  you  have  any  papers 
you  don't  wish  read,  carry  them  on  your  person. 
A  police  spy  will  come  to  your  room  five  minutes 
after  you  have  surrendered  your  passpfln.  He 
will  pretend  to  be  an  American,  or  at  least  to 
have  lived  in  America  and  to  love  Americans. 
He  will  want  to  find  out  what  you  have  done  and 
what  you  propose  doing,  and  will  see  that  you 
are  watched.  While  you  are  out  he  will  see  that 
your  luggage  is  searched;  you  had  better  lock 
nothing  up.  Tell  him  you  leave  early  to-morrow 
morning  for  St.  Petersburg,  and  must  have  your 
passports  back ;  promise  him  a  ruble,  to  have  no 
mistake.  Then  drop  in  at  the  Cafe  Tomboff  at 
exactly  3.50,  but  do  not  act  as  though  you  looked 
for  any  one  there.  Zerowski  will  join  you  five 
minutes  later,  quite  by  accident,  you  understand. 
Good-bye." 

Ill 

Remington  and  I  looked  at  each  other  du- 
biously as  we  left  the  chemist  and  sought  our 
hotel.  Neither  of  us  relished  the  idea  of  attain- 
ing our  object  by  indirect  methods,  although  I 
was  prepared  to  sacrifice  something  for  the  sake 


56  THE    r.ORDKRLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

of  exchangint^  news  with  my  Polish  friend  Ze- 
rowski,  who,  by-the-way,  makes  it  his  business  to 
know  what  is  going  on. 

"  I  don't  care  for  Russia,  anyway,"  said  Rem- 
ington, finally,  after  we  had  spent  some  minutes 
debating  the  advisability  of  joining  Zerowski  at 
the  Cafe  Tomboff.  "  Let's  go  back  to  Germa- 
ny, Hifhgaiy,  Turkey,  Africa — anywhere  out  of 
this—" 

He  did  not  finish  his  sentence,  for  at  that  point 
the  door  opened  softly  and  swiftly  to  admit  a 
sleek  little  bald-headed,  black-coated,  blinking 
man  of  about  fifty  years  of  age,  who  said,  with  a 
smirk,  and  in  bad  English,  "  I  thought  I  heard 
you  say  '  Come  in  !'  " 

We  had  not  said  "  Come  in,"  but  did  not  dis- 
cuss that  point. 

"  You  have  just  arrived  from  Berlin?"  he 
said. 

"  No,  from  America,"  said  Remington. 

"But  where  did  you  stop  last  before  reaching 
Warsaw  ?" 

"  Wherever  the  train  stopped,"  said  Reming- 
ton, 

He  then  tried  to  know  where  our  next  objec- 
tive was,  whether  we  had  friends  in  Warsaw,  how 
long  we  should  stop,  and  finally  offered  himself 
to  us  as  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend,  on  the 
strength  of  having  lost  his  heart  in  America. 

We  parried  his  questions,  gave  him  to  under- 


I    THOUGHT    I    HKAKD    VOU    SAY    '  COMIC    IN  !' 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA  59 

stand  that  we  did  not  need  him,  expelled  him 
finally  from  the  room,  and  then  strolled  off  to 
the  Cafe  Tomboff.  / 

The  chemist  was  right ;  the  spy  was  in  our 
wake.  We  had  scarcely  seated  ourselves  at  the 
Tomboff  when  the  little  blinking  man  entered 
the  place,  took  his  seat  at  a  table  in  the  corner, 
and  engaged  in  earnest  conversation  with  a  guest 
who  had  been  sipping  a  cup  of  coffee  there.  The 
subject  of  the  conversation  was  obviously  our- 
selves, to  judge  by  the  manner  in  which  the  sec- 
ond man's  eyes  worked  in  our  direction.  The 
blinking  man  soon  disappeared,  and  the  younger 
one  was  left  to  watch. 

Zerowski  entered  the  outer  door  of  the  Tom- 
boff exactly  five  minutes  after  Remington  and  I 
had  taken  our  seats.  He  stood  a  moment  on  the 
threshold,  in  the  manner  of  a  man  undecided 
whether  to  loaf  or  go  to  work.  His  eyes  rested 
on  us,  then  on  the  spy,  then  wandered  listlessly 
about  the  room.  Finally,  pretending  to  be  very 
much  bored,  he  sauntered  down  among  the  lit- 
tle tables,  passed  ours  without  a  glance  at  me, 
went  slowly  to  the  farthest  end  of  the  establish- 
ment, appeared  very  much  annoyed  at  not  find- 
ing a  table  for  himself  alone,  strolled  back  tow- 
ards us,  asked  politely  if  he  might  sit  at  our 
table,  took  his  seat  as  a  stranger,  offered  Rem- 
ington a  cigarette,  and  said  to  me,  in  a  whisper, 
as  he  bowed  to  Remington  : 


6o  THE    P.ORDIiRLANO    OK    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

"Consider  that  I've  never  seen  you  before; 
there  is  an  agent  of  the  secret  service  three 
tables  from  you." 

Zerowski  is  one  of  the  many  patriots  in  Poland 
who  remain  in  their  own  country,  bound  by  large 
estates  which  they  cannot  dispose  of,  and  who  pray 
morning  and  night  for  a  cessation  of  the  present 
barbarous  government.  Like  most  Poles  with  a 
liberal  education,  he  has  served  a  term  in  the 
Warsaw  citadel,  and  is  on  the  list  of  "suspects" 
who  are  to  be  arrested  and  deported  at  the  first 
rumblings  of  revolution  in  Poland. 

"What  is  the  news?"  I  asked. 

"  Don't  ask  me,"  he  said,  "  we  are  in  Russia,  in 
the  Military  Department  of  the  Vistula."  Then 
lowering  his  voice,  he  said,  in  French :  "  There 
will  be  soon  another  excursion  to  Siberia  —  a 
large  one  this  time — students  of  the  university 
here — you  should  stop  to  see  it — in  about  seventy 
days,  I  think." 

Remington,  whose  senses  have  been  quickened 
by  mixing  paints  among  the  huts  of  Cheyennes 
and  Apaches,  gave  me  at  this  point  a  kick  be- 
neath the  table-cloth,  and  remarked,  with  empha- 
sis, that  he  did  not  relish  the  company  of  the 
sneak-agcnt,  who  by  this  time  had  brought  his 
chair  one  table  nearer. 

"  I  shall  go  from  here  to  the  theatre,"  said 
Zerowski ;  "  shall  get  three  seats  together  ;  shall 
send  two  by  a  safe  messenger  to  your  hotel ;  they 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA  63 

will  be  there  in  an  hour ;  meanwhile  stroll  about 
town,  and  let  the  hotel  porter  know  where  }'ou 
are  going,  so  as  to  disarm  suspicion." 

The  theatre  was  full ;  but  as  neither  Reming- 
ton nor  I  included  Polish  among  our  acquired 
accomplishments,  we  could  not  do  justice  to  the 
performance. 

Zerowski  came  in,  but  took  a  seat  far  away 
from  us,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  seat  next  to 
me  remained  vacant.  After  the  first  act  we  met 
in  the  adjoining  garden,  and  his  first  words  were  : 

"  Thank  God,  the  scoundrel  has  gone !  He 
saw  that  I  took  a  seat  far  from  you.  He  con- 
cludes that  he  can  make  nothing  of  us  to-night. 
He  has  gone  to  write  his  report,  or  do  some 
other  dirty  work." 

"  But  about  the  university?"  I  asked. 

"  Not  a  word  has  appeared  or  can  appear  in 
any  Russian  paper ;  not  a  word  can  pass  the  cen- 
sor that  touches  this  matter.  I  have  a  '  discreet ' 
friend  in  the  Warsaw  faculty  ;  he  has  told  me 
something,  but  it  would  mean  dismissal  or  worse 
to  him  if  the  police  knew  that  he  had  said  a  word 
about  it. 

"  You  must  know,"  said  Zerowski,  "  that  the 
czar's  government  has  undertaken  to  tear  up  by 
the  roots  every  manifestation  of  life  that  does 
not  spring  from  soil  prepared  by  Russian  priest 
or  police.  The  little  veneer  of  civilization  you 
find  in  Russia  is  due  to  Poland  in  the  first  i)lace, 


64  llll-;    r.iiKDKRI.AND    OK    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

and,  in  modern  times,  to  Germany.  I  am  a  I^ole. 
Aly  family  had  enjoyed  tlie  fruits  of  Europe- 
an civilization  hundreds  of  years  before  Russia 
emerged  from  a  wilderness  of  prowling  Cossacks. 
The  Russian  hate§  us  because  he  is  grossly  in- 
ferior intellectually,  and  because  we  refuse  to 
descend  to  his  level.  He  has  conquered  us ;  he 
has  flogged  us ;  he  has  erased  the  name  of  Po- 
land from  his  map.  My  children  dare  not  speak 
their  mother-tongue  ;  my  wife  dares  not  employ 
a  governess  of  her  own  nation;  my  very  servants 
must  be  selected  for  me  by  the  Russian  police. 
The  czar  has  cut  Poland  off  from  all  intercourse 
with  Europe,  and  forced  her  to  starve  or  pick  up 
the  crumbs  from  his  table.  The  Pole  can  no 
longer  get  a  decent  education  in  his  own  country  ; 
the  Russian  police  control  our  schools  as  they  do 
our  newspapers,  and  their  object  is  to  have  all 
the  professions  in  Poland  filled  only  by  orthodox 
Russians. 

"  People  in  England  and  America  cannot  un- 
derstand what  this  means,  for  superficially  it 
seems  a  light  burden.  But  look  at  it  from  the 
Polish  side.  You  are  a  young  man.  You  wish 
to  become  an  engineer,  a  doctor,  a  lawyer,  an 
architect  —  anything  of  that  kind.  You  must 
pass  a  scries  of  government  examinations,  or  you 
cannot  begin  to  earn  a  living.  Your  examiners 
are  Russians,  and  they  have  orders  to  favor  all 
the  '  Orthodox,'  and  place  obstacles  in  the  way 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA  65 

of  Poles.  Suppose,  after  passing  all  the  pre- 
liminary obstacles,  you  get  your  government  li- 
cense, you  find  then  that  you  can  accomplish 
everything  if  you  are  of  the  Greek  Church,  and 
next  to  nothing  if  you  are  not.  In  Russia  the 
government  permeates  every  department  of  hu- 
man activity — military,  medical,  legal,  administra-^ 
five,  telegraph,  railway,  engineering.  You  cannot 
place  your  finger  on  anything  that  does  not  de- 
pend to  a  large  extent  upon  government  favor. 
As  a  result  you  find  that  at  every  step  in  your 
professional  course  you  are  heavily  handicapped 
by  the  knowledge  that  you  will  never  get  em- 
ployment except  from  the  very  few  who  are  so 
bold  as  to  employ  you  in  spite  of  your  national 
disability.  Poles  do  still  earn  a  living,  but  it  is 
mainly  by  making  themselves  exceptionally  useful 
to  a  Russian  official  who  has  more  patronage 
than  intelligence.  A  few  days  before  you  arrived 
the  Polish  students  at  the  Warsaw  University 
had  been  deeply  outraged  by  the  Russian  head 
of  the  faculty — or  rather,  I  should  say  that  a 
series  of  outrages  brought  on  an  explosion.  The 
Russians,  one  and  all,  stupid  or  not,  received 
diplomas  at  Commencement ;  while  the  Poles, 
whose  capacity  w^as  notoriously  superior,  were, 
almost  to  a  man,  rejected.  The  shameless  po- 
litical bias  was  so  apparent  that  all  Warsaw 
was  ablaze,  and  one  fine  day  the  students  lost 
control  of  themselves,  and  gave  the  three  most 
5 


66  THE    r.ORDEKLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

obnoxious  members  of  their  faculty  a  sound 
peltini;.  Such  a  thing  probably  ncv^er  could 
happen  in  America — " 

To  which  I  was  compelled  to  answer  that  I 
had  known,  "  'neath  the  elms  of  dear  old  Yale," 
of  students  smashing  the  window  of  a  very  un- 
^jopular  tutor. 

"  Bismarck  used  to  i)retend  that  the  Poles  were 
like  the  Irish  —  chronically  rebellious.  That 
is  not  true.  There  is  no  similarity  between  the 
two  nations.  England  is  giving  Ireland  the  best 
government  that  unhappy  country  has  ever  had ; 
Russia  is  giving  Poland  the  worst  government  it 
is  possible  to  conceive  of — worse  even  than  what 
she  gives  her  own  orthodox  subjects.  England 
is  raising  the  Irish  to  a  higher  level ;  Russia  is 
dragging  us  down  into  the  mud."- 

"  What  will  the  police  do  with  the  disorderly 
Polish  students?"  I  asked. 

"  Not  so  loud,  if  you  please,"  said  Zerowski, 
glancing  about  him.  "  There  are  spies  at  work 
now.  They  are  being  watched.  The  meshes 
are  being  drawn  slowly  and  silently  about  them. 
Their  letters  are  intercepted.  They  are  being 
lulled  into  a  false  sense  of  security.  By-and-b)^, 
in  about  three  months,  a  raid  will  be  made,  and 
another  transport  to  Siberia  commence.  .  .  ." 

Between  the  acts  we  met  by  accident  Professor 
X.,  the  Polish  member  of  the  faculty,  to  whom 
Zerowski  introduced  us. 


A    GENDARME   IN    WARSAW 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA  69 

"  Ask  him  about  the  university  row,"  whispered 
my  friend  to  me. 

I  did  so,  and  Professor  X.  answered  with  osten- 
tatious emphasis : 

"University  row!  You  surely  must  be  tliink- 
ing  of  some  other  university  !  The  Warsaw  Uni- 
versity never  has  any  row  of  any  kind !  Good- 
evening." 

Zerowski  smiled  sadly  as  the  form  of  the  pro- 
fessor disappeared  in  the  crowd. 

"  There  goes,"  said  he,  "  a  product  of  Russian 
rule — the  smooth  liar.  That  is  the  man  who  told 
me  the  whole  story.  I  introduced  you  only  to 
give  you  a  little  object-lesson." 

As  we  parted  that  night,  Zerowski  said  :  "  You 
will  understand  why  it  is  better  that  I  do  not 
come  to  the  station  to  see  you  off.  You  are 
being  watched  here,  and  you  will  not  move  in 
Russia  without  a  police  agent  behind  you." 


IV 

On  the  6th  of  June  Remington  and  I  reached 
St.  Petersburg,  and  after  depositing  our  scant 
canoe  kit  at  the  hotel,  hurried  to  the  legation  of 
the  United  States. 

The  St.  Petersburg  cabs  have  wheels  a  trifle 
larger  than  that  of  a  wheelbarrow,  and  hold  about 
as  much.     Remingtc^n  and  I  hugged  each  other 


70  THE    liORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

hard  to  keep  from  "  drippini^  out  "  over  the  sides 
as  we  jumped  and  bumped  over  the  rough  pave- 
ment of  the  vast  and  lonesome  squares  that  seem 
speciall)'  designed  for  military  purposes.  The 
horse  of  the  droschka  is  small  but  spry,  and  drags 
the  clumsy  little  cab  with  extraordinary  facility. 
Every  other  cab  we  met  contained  a  man  in  uni- 
form. Germany  seemed  bad  enough  in  this  re- 
spect, but  in  St.  Petersburg  there  seemed  no 
choice  between  uniforms  and  rags.  The  driver, 
no  doubt,  likes  the  small  droschka  because  it 
makes  his  horse  look  stronger,  while  the  official, 
no  doubt,  loves  it  because  it  makes  his  propor- 
tions appear  to  advantage.  The  horse  probably 
curses  it  as  a  clumsy  weight,  and  sighs  for  a  civil- 
ized carriage. 

A  most  distinguished-looking  footman  opened 
the  door  for  us,  in  answer  to  our  ring,  and  ushered 
us  into  a  room  full  of  costly  adornment.  The 
legations  of  Berlin,  Paris,  London,  and  Vienna 
paled  in  comparison  with  this  princely  suite,  for 
from  our  seats  we  gazed  in  wonder  upon  room 
after  room  of  corresponding  luxury. 

Being  but  plain  American  travellers,  and  hav- 
ing been  ushered  into  this  apartment  in  answer 
to  our  desire  to  speak  with  our  representative, 
we  concluded  that  we  were  in  the  office  of  the 
United  States,  and  that  an  extra  appropriation 
had  been  made  to  defray  the  expense  of  this 
mission.     But  we  were  wron<j. 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA  7 1 

There  was  no  United  States  minister  in  St. 
Petersburg  when  we  called,  and  the  first  secretary, 
who  acted  as  charge,  informed  us  that  we  were  in 
his  private  residence,  one  room  of  which  appeared 
especially  reserved  for  ofifice  purposes. 

In  other  countries,  particularly  semi-civilized 
ones,  the  American  seeking  the  protection  or 
assistance  of  his  minister  is  cheered  by  the  sight 
of  the  American  eagle  over  the  legation  door, 
possibly  by  a  flag-staff  from  which  the  stars  and 
stripes  wave  proudly  on  national  holidays,  pro- 
claiming to  all  the  world  that  wherever  the  Ameri- 
can citizen  travels  he  is  sure  of  the  support  of  his 
government  so  long  as  he  obeys  the  laws  of  the 
place  in  which  he  is  sojourning.  But  even  if 
eagle  and  banner  are  absent,  there  is,  in  any 
event,  a  small  brass  plate  affixed  in  some  con- 
spicuous place,  with  the  information  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  a  legation  of  the  United  States 
in  the  place. 

In  St.  Petersburg  Remington  and  I  looked  in 
vain  for  some  such  cheering  sign.  There  may 
have  been  one  in  Russian,  but  few  American 
travellers  speak  that  language.  We  stumbled 
about  in  a  wretchedly  homesick  condition,  ring- 
ing all  the  bells  in  the  neighborhood,  finding  no 
one  who  could  speak  our  language,  and  at  length 
stumbling  by  accident  upon  the  door  of  the  mag- 
nificent gentleman  who  represents  the  govern- 
ment   of   Washington    near   the    person    of    our 


72  THE    liORDERI.ANn    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

friend  the  Czar  of  all  the  Russias.  I  had  sent 
a  letter  on  the  first  day  of  June,  informing  our 
charge  in  St.  Petersburg  that  I  bore  a  commis- 
sion from  the  United  States  government,  that  I 
bore  also  the  "special  passport  "  of  the  State  De- 
partment, and  in  addition  an  official  letter  from 
the  Secretary  of  State  introducing  me  personally 
to  our  diplomatic  agents  abroad. 

Remington  also  bore  the  "  special  passport," 
and  I  added  in  my  letter  that  he  and  I  were 
travelling  together  in  order  more  completely  to 
fulfil  the  wishes  of  our  government. 

Mindful  of  the  rapidity  with  which  the  average 
American  diplomatist  loses  sight  of  his  native 
land  in  the  midst  of  courtly  pomp,  I  took  the  oc- 
casion to  remark  that  my  companion  was,  in  his 
line,  the  first  artist  of  America,  and  desired  per- 
mission to  make  sketches. 

My  letter  remarked  also  that  we  had,  at  con- 
siderable cost,  brought  with  us  from  America 
each  a  cruising  canoe,  that  we  proposed  sailing 
from  St.  Petersburg  the  whole  length  of  the 
Baltic,  making  notes  and  sketches  as  we  went 
along. 

Finally,  I  begged  that  our  representative  in 
St.  Petersburg  procure  for  me  the  necessary  per- 
mission to  make  this  cruise,  or  else,  at  least,  pre- 
sent me  to  the  official  of  whom  I  might  make 
the  request  in  person,  and  explain  the  innocent 
nature  of  our  proposed  trip. 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA  75 

Knowing  the  delays  of  diplomacy  in  Eastern 
and  semi-civilized  countries,  I  suggested  the  8th 
of  June  as  the  day  of  presentation,  assuring  the 
American  charge  that  we  should  certainly  be  on 
hand  before  then. 

Remington  and  I  had  racked  our  brains  to  im- 
agine what  further  we  could  do  to  divest  our 
mission  of  suspicious  circumstance.  We  at  last 
concluded  to  add  a  protocol  to  our  document — 
to  wit,  we  offered  to  pay  the  expenses  of  any 
one  the  Russian  government  should  kindly  send 
along  with  us  as  interpreter,  guide,  pilot,  protec- 
tor, or  spy. 

We  knew  that  last  year  the  United  States  gov- 
ernment had  sent  a  special  committee  to  Russia 
to  report  upon  Jewish  emigration,  that  this  com- 
mittee had  been  snubbed,  and  that  it  left  St. 
Petersburg  in  disgust,  without  having  been  rec- 
ognized by  the  proper  department  of  state. 

Against  this  contingency  we  fancied  we  had 
protected  ourselves  completely,  for  we  had  sent 
our  request  a  week  beforehand.  Our  mission 
was  not  in  the  remotest  degree  connected  with 
any  political  question  whatsoever ;  for  what  can 
be  more  innocent  than  the  question  of  tree-plant- 
ing along  the  sea-shores? 

Besides,  I  had  made  a  full  statement  of  my 
purpose  to  the  much-beloved  ambassador  of  Rus- 
sia in  Berlin,  Count  Schuvaloff.  He  is  a  man 
full  of  amiability,  particularly  kind  to  Americans, 


76  THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

and  incapable  of  <^uilc.  He  could  not  ha\'e  shown 
more  interest  in  my  project  liad  he  been  my  own 
father;  assured  me  that  I  would  have  a  delight- 
ful trip,  that  I  should  be  received  with  open 
arms,  begged  to  know  what  he  could  do  for  me, 
even  gave  me  a  most  cordial  letter  of  introduc- 
tion to  one  of  the  greatest  names  in  St.  Peters- 
burg. 

What  more  could  an  American  citizen  desire, 
travelling  in  a  country  bound  to  us  by  so  many 
friendly  ties  as  Russia?  Surely  we  did  not  ex- 
pect the  American  navy  as  escort !  The  fleet  of 
grain-ships  which  we  sent  for  the  starving  peas- 
ants should  have  been  a  good  substitute. 

The  American  charge  calmly  informed  us  at 
our  first  interview  that  he  had  not  made  any  re- 
quest, written  or  oral,  in  our  behalf. 

This  was  rather  staggering,  after  giving  him  a 
week's  start  for  this  very  purpose  !  Remington 
looked  ready  for  a  fight. 

The  charge  explained  that  there  was  some 
dif^culty  in  regard  to  diplomatic  usage  or  prece- 
dent. 

I  protested  that  the  Russian  minister  in  Wash- 
ington would  find  no  difficulty  in  getting  his  re- 
quest before  the  Secretary  of  State,  and  I  vent- 
ured to  think  that  the  United  States  minister  in 
St.  Petersburg  was  of  quite  as  much  importance 
as  the  Russian  minister  in  Washington,  and  that 
if  that  was  not  the  case,  it  was  time  people  in 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA  77 

America  heard  all  about  it.  Our  formal  papers 
we  had  brought  along,  and  asked  him  to  read 
them.  He  did  so,  returned  them,  and  remarked, 
in  rather  a  tired  manner,  that  they  were  lacking 
in  diplomatic  form. 

To  this  I  rejoined  that  it  was  not  for  me  to 
criticise  the  diplomatic  form  of  my  State  Depart- 
ment ;  that  he  might  do  that  if  he  chose,  but 
not  through  me.  That  our  business  in  St.  Peters- 
burg was  exclusively  to  obtain  such  permission 
as  should  protect  us  in  our  coasting  cruise. 

The  charge  answered  very  vaguely,  and  re- 
minded me  that  in  the  last  year  the  Russian 
government  had  grown  very  jealous  of  foreigners 
who  came  to  report  upon  things  in  Russia.  To 
this  I  answered  that  China  also  disliked  the  for- 
eigner, but  that  I  had  found  no  difificulty  in 
travelling  there — even  into  the  interior. 

We  pressed  upon  him  the  fact  that  both  of  us 
were  prepared  to  give  the  fullest  guarantees  re- 
garding the  purely  innocent  nature  of  our  cruise. 
Again  we  offered  to  defray  the  cost  of  a  govern- 
ment escort.  The  charge  smiled,  and  shook  his 
head,  and  told  us  urbanely  that  we  had  come  on 
a  fool's  errand. 

Finally,  in  the  presence  of  our  military  attache 
and  Remington,  I  said  to  him  :  "  Here  is  a  formal 
request.  I  ask  you,  on  the  strength  of  the  gov- 
ernment papers  I  carry,  to  take  me  before  the 
proper  official  of  the  Russian  government ;  I  wish 


7.S  IHE    noRDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

to  be  properly  introduced  to  liim  ;  I  wisli  to  pre- 
sent the  credentials  of  the  United  States  govern- 
ment ;  I  wish  to  explain  the  nature  of  our  mission, 
and  I  wish  to  learn  definitely  from  his  lips  wheth- 
er there  can  possibly  be  any  obstacle  thrown  in 
our  path." 

The  charge  looked  from  one  to  the  other  of 
us  with  a  quizzical  smile.  Had  we  asked  for  a 
loan  of  the  Russian  czar,  I  should  have  expected 
such  a  smile. 

"  It's  quite  impossible,"  was  his  terse  answer. 
"  It's  contrary  to  all  diplomatic  precedent,  don't 
you  know  !" 

What  was  to  be  done?  Remington  and  I 
concluded  to  wait  at  least  three  days.  If  by 
that  time  the  government  gave  us  no  answer, 
we  should  take  our  canoes  to  the  first  German 
port,  cruise  the  Kaiser's  coast  first,  and  then  re- 
turn to  Russia,  in  case  permission  should  have 
been  finally  accorded. 

The  charge  had  at  last  condescended  to  prom- 
ise that  he  would  write  formally  for  the  needed 
authority,  and  would  do  everything  in  his  power 
to  further  our  mission,  etc. 

Russia  is  an  expensive  place  to  live  in,  partic- 
ularly the  capital.  The  stranger  is  fair  game  for 
extortion,  and  we  found  that  at  the  rate  of  out- 
lay current  with  us,  we  should  soon  be  bankrupt. 
Socially  our  time  passed  agreeably  enough,  for 
we  had  letters  to  high  and  mighty  functionaries, 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA  79 

who  treated  us  most  cordially,  invited  us  to  their 
country-seats,  offered  to  do  everything  under 
heaven  to  enhance  our  happiness,  except  the 
one  thing  we  particularly  wished  done.  Princes, 
counts,  colonels,  ambassadors,  adjutants,  and 
aides-de-camp — these  could  furnish  caviar,  cham- 
pagne, and  lordly  hospitality,  but  not  one  of 
them  dared  move  in  a  matter  interesting  to  the 
Third  Section — the  secret  police. 

The  letters  we  received  were  of  course  opened 
by  the  police,  and  clumsily  closed  again.  Rem- 
ington was  one  day  driving  in  the  suburbs,  when 
he  became  aware  that  an  official  was  following 
in  a  second  droschka.  The  following  droschka, 
however,  passed  his  after  a  while,  and  Reming- 
ton noticed  that  its  occupant  spoke  to  a  gen- 
darme on  the  road  ahead.  What  he  said,  of 
course  we  do  not  know,  but  when  Remington 
reached  that  point,  the  gendarme  stopped  his 
carriage,  turned  the  horse's  head  back  towards 
the  city,  and  gave  the  driver  some  instructions 
in  Russian  that  resulted  in  Remington  finding 
himself  an  unwilling  arrival  back  at  the  hotel, 
where  I  found  him  an  hour  later,  pacing  the  floor 
like  a  caged  lion,  and  venting  his  feelings  in  vig- 
orous English. 

We  were  used  to  being  watched,  but  this  was 
more  than  we  had  bargained  for. 

On  the  fourth  day  we  called  at  the  legation  at 
half-past  ten  in  the  forenoon.     The  impressive 


8o  THE    nORDERI.AND    OK    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

man-servant  told  us  that  his  excellency  the 
charge  was  in  bed.  VVe  sent  up  word  on  a  card 
that  we  called  to  know  if  he  had  any  news  for  us. 
He  sent  down  word  by  the  splendid  servant  that 
he  had  no  news;  did  not  know  v;hen  he  should 
have  any  ;  that  there  was  no  use  in  our  waitinf^ 
for  any. 

We  returned  a  farewell  message  of  thanks  and 
compliments,  and  left. 

Two  days  before,  we  had  interview^ed  the  head 
of  the  customs,  and  had  arranged  to  have  our 
boats  shipped  by  fast  freight  to  Kovno,  on  the 
river  Niemen,  supposing  that  forty-eight  hours' 
start  was  quite  enough.  We  had  also  told  the 
hotel  porter  that  wc  were  to  start  to-day,  and  or- 
dered him  to  have  our  passports.  He  came  to 
us  with  a  drawn  face,  however ;  said  he  was  very 
sorry ;  that  he  had  been  to  the  police  station  ; 
that  there  was  some  difficulty  ;  that  he  could 
not  get  them  for  us. 

"  Now^  we  arc  in  for  it,"  thought  \\&.  For,  of 
course,  without  a  passport  we  ceased  to  be  Amer- 
icans, or  even  human  beings  ;  we  became  merely 
the  number  of  a  police  cell. 

Luckily  for  us,  an  official  close  to  the  person 
of  the  czar  happened  to  call  upon  us  at  that  mo- 
ment, and  to  him  we  explained  our  predicament. 
He  left  us  for  a  moment,  then  returned,  and  as- 
sured us  that  there  must  be  some  mistake,  that 
our  passports  would  surely  arrive.     W^e  chatted 


GENDARME,    ST.   PETERSBURG 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA  83 

for  a  while,  and,  sure  enough,  as  though  by  magic, 
the  precious  documents  once  more  made  their 
appearance,  duly  stamped  and  sealed.  What 
potent  spell  our  great  friend  had  exercised  we 
shall  never  know,  but  to  us  he  was  a  friend  in 
need,  and  we  feel  very  grateful  for  his  interces- 
sion. 


V 

Between  St.  Petersburg  and  Kovno  I  stopped 
for  a  chat  with  a  friend  who  knows  the  devious 
methods  of  Russian  government  pretty  well.  I 
told  him  my  tale,  and  asked  him  what  he  made 
of  it. 

"  Nothing  is  simpler,"  said  he.  "  You  are  po- 
litely requested  to  disappear  from  Russia  at  the 
shortest  possible  notice.  You  have  been  watched 
from  beginning  to  end,  and  you  may  be  watched 
at  this  moment.  You  might  have  waited  a  month 
in  St.  Petersburg,  but  you  would  never  have  got 
an  answer  to  your  request." 

"  But,"  said  I,  "what  if  I  had  gone  on  without 
permission  ?" 

"  You  would  never  know  what  had  interfered 
with  you.  You  would  have  been  arrested  at  the 
first  convenient  place,  and  kept  a  w^eek  or  so 
pending  examination.  What  is  most  likely, 
however,"  said  he,  "  some  dark  night  your  boats 
would   have    been    smashed   to   kindling-wood; 


84  I'HE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

your  stores,  papers,  and  valuables  would  have 
Ijcen  taken  away,  and  yourselves  turned  adrift 
in  a  swamp." 

"  But,"  said  I,  "you  don't  mean  to  say  that  a 
great  government  would  permit  such  a  thing?" 

"  Oh,  of  course  not !  Our  great  government 
would  express  the  most  profound  regret  at  the 
accident ;  it  would  insist  that  the  damage  was 
done  not  by  police  agents,  but  by  common 
thieves.  In  any  event,  you  would  be  stopped 
before  you  got  a  hundred  miles  away  from  St. 
Petersburg,  and,  what  is  more,  you  would  never 
be  able  to  prove  that  the  government  had  stopped 
you. 

"  In  Russia  we  are  far  ahead  of  Western  Eu- 
rope. We  have  copied  lynch-law  from  America, 
only  here  the  government  does  the  lynching. 
When  a  man  is  obnoxious,  reads  or  writes  or 
talks  too  much,  we  do  not  bother  about  courts 
and  sheriffs.  He  disappears — that  is  all.  When 
his  friends  come. to  inquire  after  him,  the  gov- 
ernment shrugs  its  shoulders,  and  knows  noth- 
ing about  it.  He  has  been  killed  by  robbers, 
perhaps,  or  he  has  committed  suicide  !  The  gov- 
ernment cannot  be  held  responsible  for  every 
traveller  in  Russia,  of  course ! 

"  When  a  military  attache  is  suspected  of 
knowing  too  much  about  Russian  affairs,  his 
rooms  are  ahvays  broken  into  and  ransacked. 
Not  by  the  government  —  oh  dear,  no !     That 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA  85 

would  be  shocking!  It  is  always  done  by  burg- 
lars. But,  o'Bd  to  say,  these  Russian  burglars  al- 
ways care  particularly  for  papers  and  letters. 

"The  German  military  attache  has  had  his 
rooms  broken  into  twice  in  this  manner,  and  to 
prevent  a  third  invasion  he  assured  the  chief  of 
police  that  there  was  no  use  doing  it  any  more, 
that  he  really  never  kept  any  important  papers 
there.  Since  then  he  has  not  been  troubled  by 
official  burelars." 


VI 

We  were  turned  out  upon  the  platform  at 
Kovno  at  a  quarter- past  four  of  a  misty  and 
chilly  morning,  and,  after  wandering  about  this 
mysterious  fortress-town  until  its  only  popula- 
tion, Jews  and  soldiers,  filled  the  streets,  we  em- 
barked on  a  little  steamboat  bound  down  the 
Niemen.  One  of  the  passengers  had  answered 
my  many  questions  in  a  friendly  manner,  and 
with  him  I  had  considerable  talk  about  smug- 
glers, Jews,  Cossacks,  and  things  in  general. 
Two  men  in  uniform  on  the  opposite  side  of 
the  boat  watched  us  with  strange  intentness, 
and  for  that  reason  I  took  pains  that  our  Rus- 
sian friend  should  know  that  we  were  merely 
American  tourists  visiting  his  beautiful  country 
in  search  of  the  picturesque. 

He  disappeared  soon  after  the  boat   started, 


86  THE    noRDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

and  Remin<jton  curled  himself  up  in  the  stern- 
sheets  for  tlie  purpose  of  making  studies  of  peas- 
ant costumes.  He  liad  not  filled  many  pages 
before  a  hand  was  placed  on  my  shoulder,  and 
my  Russian  friend  whispered  in  my  ear, 

"If  you  don't  both  of  you  wish  to  spend  the 
next  few  days  in  jail,  make  your  friend  stop  his 
note-making." 

"  But,"  I  said,  "  he  is  not  making  notes ;  he  is 
a  famous  American  artist,  filling  his  sketch-book 
with  bits  of  costume." 

And,  to  convince  him  of  Remington's  inno- 
cence, I  showed  him  the  book,  full  of  memoran- 
dum sketches,  which,  however,  seemed  only  to 
make  our  case  worse. 

"  This  is  not  a  matter  for  joking,"  said  he,  ear- 
nestly. "  Two  ofificers  on  board  are  watching 
you.  Every  day  some  one  disappears  on  sus- 
picion of  playing  the  spy.  Only  last  week  two 
women  were  locked  up  in  the  fortress  overnight 
for  having  inadvertently  strayed  upon  suspicious 
ground.  They  had  come  up  the  river  with  their 
husbands  in  a  holiday  party,  and  it  was  only  with 
the  greatest  difificulty  that  they  got  clear  again. 
The  men  who  are  watching  you  will  make  no 
distinction  between  sketching  a  peasant's  nose 
and  pacing  off  a  fort  front." 

We  thanked  him  for  his  disinterested  advice. 
Remington  promptly  packed  his  book,  and  our 
friend  was  soon  once  more  in  conversation  with 


TWO    OFFICERS    AKK    WATCHING    YOU  ' 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA  89 

the  sour-looking  officials,  apparently  convincing 
them  that  we  were  not  worth  locking  up,  being 
merely  a  couple  of  crazy  American  artists,  with 
very  scant  baggage.  Had  it  not  been  for  the 
intercession  of  that  intelligent  young  Russian, 
there  is  little  doubt  in  my  mind  that  u^e  should 
have  been  arrested  at  the  next  landing,  robbed 
of  all  our  sketches  and  notes,  taken  back  to  Kov- 
no,  and  kept  in  jail  for  a  week  or  so,  or  until  our 
charge  in  St.  Petersburg  had  discovered  a  diplo- 
matic precedent  which  should  justify  him  in  de- 
manding our  release. 

The  two  officers  accompanied  us  to  the  last 
station  in  Russia,  saw  us  safely  off,  and  then  re- 
turned to  the  nearest  telegraph  office  to  report 
that  they  had  successfully  driven  two  inquiring 
foreigners  out  of  their  country,  and  done  it  so 
neatly  that  no  one  could  possibly  take  offence  ; 
no  one  could  accuse  the  czar's  government  of 
breaking  any  rule  of  international  courtesy  ! 

As  I  pen  these  lines,  a  letter  from  our  charge 
in  St.  Petersburg  reaches  me  confirming  all  that 
was  told  us  there  more  than  a  month  ago,  namely, 
that  the  Russian  government  simply  ignored  his 
application,  and  by  so  doing  gave  him  to  under- 
stand that  Remington  should  not  make  sketches 
in  Russia,  and  that  the  United  States  deserved  a 
snub  for  sending  a  commissioner  to  incjuire  about 
tree-planting  on  the  sea-coasts. 

In  other  words,  the  Russian  government  treat- 


90  IHK    liORDERLANO    OF    CZAR    AND    KAI.SER 

eel  l\.cniinL;"tc)n  and  iii)-.sclf  cxacti)-  as  it  treated 
the  Emigration  Commission  sent  by  the  United 
States  government  last  year.  When  Japan  de- 
clined to  receive  an  American  commissioner  some 
forty  years  ago,  we  sent  a  fleet  under  Commo- 
dore Perry  and  insisted  upon  the  forms  of  Eu- 
ropean courtesy.  That  was  bull)'ing  a  chival- 
rous but  weak  nation.  To-day  our  diplomatic 
representatives  in  Russia  are  treated  with  the 
same  contempt  we  have  learned  to  expect  in 
China,  and  latterly  Chile. 


VII 

A  word  about  our  precious  canoes.  These  had 
been  fitted  with  folding  centre-boards  and  drop- 
rudders  ;  had  each  two  masts  and  sails ;  had 
water-tight  compartments  fore  and  aft ;  were  ad- 
mirably adapted  for  a  long  cruise,  and  floated  the 
burgee  of  the  New  York  Canoe  Club.  Our  idea 
was  to  haul  them  ashore  at  night,  hoist  a  spe- 
cially fitted  tent  over  each  well,  sleep  on  board, 
and,  if  necessary,  cook  our  meals  as  well.  Rem- 
ington had  invented  a  water-proof  holder  for  his 
sketching  material,  exactly  fitted  to  the  canoe, 
and  in  both  boats  everything  was  done  that 
could  possibly  add  to  the  success  of  our  cruise 
from  St.  Petersburg  to  Berlin. 

C.  B.  Vaux,  the  author  of  the  standard  text- 


A    I'AGE   OF    SKETCHES   MADE    ON    THE    NIEMEN 


book  for  canoeists,  gave  us  his  advice,  so  did  the 
veteran  cruiser  C.  J.  Stevens,  the  secretary  of  the 
chib.  The  Hamburg-American  Steamship  Com- 
pany triced  the  httle  squadron  up  under  the 
boom  over  the  after-deck,  and  allowed  us  this  as 
a  part  of  our  personal  baggage  —  a  courtesy 
which  we  highly  appreciated.  From  Hamburg 
the  boats  went  to  Liibeck  by  rail,  about  one 
hour  and  a  half;  thence  by  steamboat  directly  to 


92  THE    150RDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

St.  rctcisburg.  The  whole  cost  per  boat  be- 
tween Hamburg  and  St.  Petersburg  was  40  ru- 
bles, say  $20,  making  about  $10  apiece  for  the 
whole  journey,  including  the  transfers  in  Ham- 
burg, Liibeck,  and  St.  Petersburg.  In  parenthe- 
sis I  might  add  that  the  freight  charges  in  Ger- 
many are  so  low  upon  canoes  as  to  make  land 
carriage  quite  as  cheap  as  water.  Last  year,  for 
instance,  my  canoe  was  taken  from  the  coast  of 
Holland  to  the  head-waters  of  the  Danube  by 
fast  freight  for  12.90  marks,  about  $3.20,  at  which 
rate  I  should  have  shipped  my  canoe  back  from 
St.  Petersburg  to  Kovno  for  about  $4. 

Kovno  is  about  fifty  miles  from  the  Prussian 
frontier,  on  a  river  called  Niemen  by  the  Rus- 
sians, and  Memcl  by  Germans.  It  was  for  us  the 
only  way  of  getting  to  Tilsit  without  touching  the 
Baltic  coast  first ;  and  being  on  the  direct  railway 
line  between  St.  Petersburg  and  Berlin,  promised 
the  greatest  speed.  The  express  trains  make  the 
distance  in  thirty  hours,  and  the  ordinary  ones  in 
forty-eight,  the  distance  being  about  550  miles. 
In  order  to  have  no  possible  mistake  in  regard  to 
our  retreat,  we  accepted  the  kind  offices  of  a  Rus- 
sian friend  connected  with  the  Foreign  Office. 
He  took  us  to  the  proper  express  agency,  ex- 
plained in  detail  what  was  to  be  done,  arranged 
that  the  boats  should  go  off  immediately  by 
the  fast  freight  travelling  witli  the  passenger 
train,  had  the  bill  made  out   for    us,  and   stipu- 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA  93 

lated  that  we  should  pay  on  receipt  of  the 
canoes. 

We  gave  those  canoes  forty-eight  hours'  start, 
and  found  on  arrival  in  Kovno  that  there  was  no 
record  of  them  Avhatever.  The  chief  of  the  sta- 
tion said  he  understood  no  French  or  German, 
but  by  the  assistance  of  an  intelligent  young 
woman  who  operated  the  telegraph,  we  came  to 
an  understanding. 

I  showed  him  our  passports  and  credentials, 
told  him  we  expected  our  boats  here,  and  asked 
him  if  he  would  forward  them  on  to  us  when 
they  came.     He  said  he  would. 

We  then  asked  if  he  wished  payment  on  bill 
of  lading.  He  said  that  was  not  necessary ;  the 
boats  would  be  sent  right  on  across  the  frontier 
as  soon  as  they  arrived,  and  the  money  collected 
at  the  other  end. 

I  then  left  with  the  intelligent  young  telegraph 
operator  our  address,  and  money  to  defray  cost 
of  messages.  She  refused  the  money  present  we 
offered  her — conclusive  evidence  that  she  was 
not  Russian. 

All  this  happened  on  June  lOth.  Remington 
and  1  meanwhile  went  down  the  river  by  steam- 
er; made  a  few  excursions  to  kill  time  ;  finally  lo- 
cated ourselves  at  Trakchnen,  about  ten  miles 
from  the  Russian  frontier,  only  sixty  miles  from 
Kovno,  and  waited  patiently  for  our  canoes. 

On  June  nth  came  a  Russian  telegram  which 


94  TUF.    r.ORDERLAXn    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

tons  was  a  miuldlc  :  "If  wooden  boats  must 
pay  in  Kovno,  if  metal  can  be  paid  in  Trakeh- 
nen." 

A  hit^h  German  official,  whose  guests  we  were, 
happened  to  be  an  intimate  personal  friend  of 
the  German  consul  in  Kovno,  and  therefore,  to 
simplify  the  whole  matter,  he  kindly  telegraphed 
him  to  pay  all  charges,  and  do  everything  need- 
ful to  hurry  the  boats  on.  We  certainly  thought 
that  this  would  be  guarantee  enough  for  the  Rus- 
sian police. 

On  June  13th,  when  we  expected  to  be  far 
awa\-  in  our  boats  down  the  Pregel,  came  another 
Kovno  cable  saying  that  92  rubles  must  be  paid 
before  the  railway  chief  would  let  the  boats 
start.  Of  course  we  cabled  back  that  money 
was  no  object,  that  the  German  consul  was  re- 
sponsible, and  that  we  wanted  the  boats  very 
badly. 

We  waited  another  twenty-four  hours,  and  then 
came  another  vexatious  cable — that  Kovno  would 
not  forward  the  boats  until  they  had  received  the 
bill  of  lading.  We  were  now  indignant,  because 
we  had  offered  the  bill  of  lading  once  before,  and 
it  had  been  declined ;  and,  besides,  the  German 
consul  surely  was  guarantee  enough  that  we  were 
not  tramps.  At  last,  on  the  i6th,  came  a  cable 
from  the  German  consul  saying  that  the  bill  of 
lading  had  come,  and  that  the  charges  against  us 
amounted  to    lOO  rubles,  or  300  marks,  say  $70, 


WHY    WE    LEFT    RUSSIA  97 

or  about  double  what  they  should  have  been. 
We  cabled  back  to  pay  up  and  send  the  boats  on. 

We  had  long  ago  made  up  our  minds  that  the 
Russians  in  Kovno  were  doing  their  best  to  spoil 
our  canoe  cruise  by  obstructions  of  the  most  un- 
necessary kind. 

At  last,  after  an  infinite  amount  of  worry  and 
needless  expense,  the  canoes  reached  Stettin,  on 
the  Baltic,  on  the  2d  of  July,  having  been  on  the 
way  since  the  8th  of  June. 

At  Kovno  the  police  were  curious  to  know 
what  was  in  the  boat  of  Remington,  so  they  took 
a  hammer  and  smashed  a  hole  through  the  beau- 
tiful mahogany  deck,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
hatches  were  on  purpose  left  unlocked. 

Remington  waited  about  Europe  for  a  whole 
month,  hoping  from  day  to  day  that  our  diplo- 
matic representative  in  St.  Petersburg  would  se- 
cure, at  least  for  him,  the  necessary  police  per- 
mit to  make  sketches.*  He  has  gone  home  now, 
and  left  me  to  write  the  net  results  of  this  mem- 
orable railway  canoe  cruise — a  wasted  month,  an 
empty  pocket,  a  smashed  canoe. 

*  It  is  proper  here  to  say  that  after  a  delay  of  two  months, 
and  when  it  was  no  longer  of  use,  the  formal  permit  was  accorded 
to  both  the  author  and  artist  by  the  Russian  authorities. 
7 


THE   RUSSIAN    AND    HIS    JEW 


R' 


ately 
China 


USSIA  has  more 
than  a  third  of  all 
the  Jews  in  the  world, 
and  she  is  doing  her 
best  to  reduce  this  num- 
ber. Official  statistics 
are  not  quite  reliable  on 
this  subject,  but  it  is 
assumed  by  the  best-in- 
formed that  Russia  must 
liave  close  on  to  3,000,- 
000  of  the  Hebrew  race. 
The  United  States  and 
Kngland  are  shocked  by 
the  measures  which  the 
czar  is  taking  against 
these  people,  and  charge 
him  with  reviving  relig- 
ious persecution.  The 
czar  replies  to  this  by 
pointing  out  that  the 
United  States  deliber- 
closcd  its  doors  against  emigration  from 
,  whose  subjects  were  represented  in  Ameri- 


THE    RUSSIAN    AND    HIS    JEW  99 

ca  to  the  extent  of  only  about  100,000  souls, 
mostly  upon  the  Pacific  coast.  In  this  matter, 
moreover,  the  czar  moves  in  harmony  with  the 
overwhelming  majority  of  his  people,  high  and 
low  ;  and  were  his  people  to-morrow  to  proclaim 
a  republic,  one  of  the  few  laws  which  it  would 
not  repeal  would  be  that  which  excludes  the 
Jew  from  Holy  Russia.  The  Russian  knows 
his  Jew  better  than  we  know  him,  and  is  there- 
fore better  qualified  to  legislate  on  the  sub- 
ject. 

The  general  outburst  of  indignation  which 
greeted  the  anti  -  Jewish  legislation  of  Russia 
since  the  accession  of  the  present  czar  may  be 
accounted  for  in  many  ways.  The  newspapers 
and  banks  of  Europe  are  largely  in  Jewish  hands, 
and  this  power  was  of  course  quickly  evoked  to 
create  public  sympathy  for  their  persecuted  co- 
■  religionists.  The  popular  sentiment  was,  how- 
ever, most  intelligent  and  most  effective  in  the 
countries  immediately  bordering  upon  Russia, 
whose  people  wasted  little  time  in  theorizing  on 
the  rights  of  man  or  the  beauties  of  tolerance, 
but  organized  with  a  view  of  protecting  them- 
selves against  an  influx  of  unwelcome  immi- 
grants. Castle  Garden  is  not  the  only  point  to 
which  the  Jew  of  Russia  has  fled  for  comfort. 
He  is  equally  keen  in  his  desire  to  find  a  home 
in  western  Europe,  where  he  can  live  in  towns, 
pursue   his   life    as  broker,  and    not   be    too    far 


lOO         THE    P.ORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

away  from  the  hcackiuartcrs  of  his  religious  in- 
spiration. America,  Knghmd,  France,  Spain,  It- 
aly, Holland,  Sweden,  Norway — these  countries 
have  few  Jews,  comparatively  speaking,  and  they 
are  pretty  well  distributed.  The  stranger  walk- 
ing down  Broadway,  guided  by  the  signs  over 
the  shops  of  jobbers  and  importers,  might  con- 
clude that  the  Jews  own  New  York,  yet  what  we 
have  is  a  mere  nothing  to  what  one  country  of 
Russia  alone  —  Poland  —  has,  whose  Jewish  pop- 
ulation, according  to  the  last  census,  was  about 
800,000.  In  England,  Jews  are  met  in  every  walk 
of  life — in  the  army,  the  diplomatic  service,  the 
cabinet,  the  House  of  Lords,  and  amongst  the 
boon  companions  of  England's  future  king.  As 
with  us,  they  have  cast  off  every  distinguishing 
badge  of  their  race,  and  it  is  frequently  only  by 
accident  that  we  learn  the  nature  of  their  relig- 
ious creed.  In  Russia,  however,  it  is  totally  dif-"* 
fercnt.  There  the  Jew  is  as  distinct  a  type  as  is 
with  us  the  negro  or  the  Chinaman.  You  can 
distinguish  him  as  far  as  you  can  see,  not  merely 
by  the  face  and  form,  so  graphically  drawn  by 
Mr.  Pcnnell  in  his  work  TJlc  Jciv  at  Home,  but 
in  certain  peculiarities  of  dress,  to  which  he  clings 
as  pertinaciously  as  does  the  Apache  to  his  blank- 
et or  the  Mexican  to  his  sombrero.  The  Jew  of 
Kovno,  Warsaw,  Kiev,  and  wherever  else  I  have 
run  across  him  in  Russia,  wears  a  curious  curl 
that  hangs  down  in  front  of  each  car,  sometimes 


THE    RUSSIAN    AND    HIS    JEW  lOI 

to  his  chin.  His  cap  of  black  alpaca  or  cloth  sits 
far  back  on  his  head,  close  to  his  ears,  with  a  visor 
as  large  as  those  once  fashionable  amongst  our 
brakemen  and  conductors.  His  coat  of  black 
cloth  or  alpaca  is  modelled  after  that  in  which 
Dundreary  is  usually  portrayed,  reaching  down 
to  his  ankles,  and  assisting  to  give  him  the  long, 
lean,  hungry  look  of  the  Shylock  type.  On  his 
feet  are  boots  worn  outside  of  his  trousers,  in  one 
hand  an  umbrella,  in  the  other  a  valise  ;  for  the 
Jew  in  Russia  is  usually  moving  from  place  to 
place  on  business,  unless  he  is  so  poor  as  to  be 
forced  into  menial  occupation. 

A  Russian  who  is  not  a  Jew- hater  by  any 
means,  but  a  thoroughly  practical  man  of  affairs, 
told  me  that  next  to  the  Jew's  love  of  money 
was  his  devotion  to  the  Talmud  and  its  expound- 
ers. Strange  as  it  may  seem  to  us,  who  think  of 
the  Jew  as  wandering  into  all  the  corners  of  the 
world,  guided  solely  by  the  desire  of  making 
money,  we  find  that,  on  the  contrary,  he  is  fast- 
ened to  Russia  by  the  holiest  of  ties,  that  he 
wears  his  peculiar  dress  as  proudly  as  a  High- 
lander does  his  kilt,  and  that  he  does  every- 
thing in  his  power  to  remain  at  home  and 
discourage  others  from  leaving.  To  draw  the 
orthodox  Jew  educated  in  the  school  of  the 
Talmud,  away  from  the  centre  of  his  religious 
education,  if  not  inspiration,  is  to  him  a  serious 
matter. 


I02  IHE    r.(JKl)EI<l..\Xr)    l)F    CZAR    AND    KAISKR 

We  propose  to  i)lace  before  the  inquirin;^  read- 
er a  short  sketch  of  the  manner  in  wliich  the  Jew 
is  regarded  to-da\'  !:>}•  those  who  ch'ead  his  west- 
ward migration,  and  to  bring  togetiier  some  of 
the  reasons  put  forward  by  those  who  are  so  il- 
hberai  as  to  disHke  liis  conipaii)'.  Russia  has  hn";- 
ited  the  territory  in  which  Jews  are  allowed  to 
live  to  a  narrow  strip,  beginning  in  the  Baltic 
provinces  near  Riga,  and  ending  at  the  Black  Sea, 
following,  roughly,  the  western  frontier  of  the  em- 
pire, along  the  borders  of  Prussia,  Austria,  Hun- 
gary, and  Roumania.  These  four  countries — or 
rather  three,  if  we  regard  Austria  and  Hungary 
as  one — know  more  of  the  Jews  by  actual  contact 
than  any  other  people  ;  for,  according  to  the  last 
census  on  the  subject,  there  were  in  Austro-Hun- 
gary  1,643,708;  German  Empire,  567,884;  Rou- 
mania, 400,000. 

The  same  census  gave  for  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland  only  46,000  Jews;  France,  49,439;  Nor- 
way, only  34;  Spain,  402 — in  fact,  as  compared 
with  Russia's  neighbors,  the  number  of  Jews  in 
other  countries  is  hardly  worth  mentioning. 

The  Chinese  question  in  America  was  settled 
with  reference  purely  to  the  Chinaman  as  he  was 
known  in  California,  and  did  not  take  into  con- 
sideration the  best  class  of  Chinese  in  their  own 
country.  The  Russian  regards  the  Jew  from  his 
standpoint  as  it  affects  himself  personall)',  and 
not  from  the  standi)oint  of  an  Englishman  or  an 


THE    RUSSIAN    AND    HIS    JEW  103 

American,  who  has  in  view  Jews  of  a  nobler  type. 
The  Jew  of  Russia  shades  off  into  the  PoHsh  Jew, 
then  into  the  German  Jew,  and  it  is  a  mixture  of 
these  two  that  is  now  besieging  Castle  Garden 
for  American  citizenship.  How  many  Jews  emi- 
grate from  Russia  every  year  is  not  known,  for 
large  numbers  smuggle  themselves  over  the  fron- 
tier, and  are  most  difficult  to  identify,  because 
of  the  similarity  in  feature  and  dress  of  all  the 
Chosen  People  along  this  Jewish  strip.  When  I 
was  in  Kovno  I  came  in  contact  with  a  Jew  who 
told  me  that  his  whole  business  in  life  was  smug- 
gling his  co-religionists  out  of  the  country  at  a 
fixed  price  per  head. 

The  present  alleged  persecution  of  the  Jews  in 
Russia  consists  not  so  much  in  the  making  of 
offensive  regulations  against  them  as  in  enforcing 
laws  of  longstanding,  which  the  Jews  have  evaded 
by  the  assistance  of  the  police,  and  of  course  by 
heavy  bribes.  The  law  has  distinctly  prohibited 
Jews  in  general  from  settling  in  Russia  proper, 
exception  being  made  only  in  certain  cases,  cov- 
ering artists,  scholars,  physicians,  and  specially 
privileged  merchants.  But  so  clever  were  the 
Jews  in  manipulating  the  officials,  or,  perha[)s  it 
is  equally  true  to  say,  so  greedy  were  the  officials 
for  an  addition  to  their  scanty  salary,  that  in  all 
the  towns  of  Russia  proper  Jews  had  notorious- 
ly congregated  who  were  theoretically  outlaws. 
Moscow  and  St.  Petersburg,  for  instance,  had  each 


104  I'HK    r.ORDERLANI)    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

as  numy  as  40,000  contrabands  of  this  description. 
The  Jews  must  have  been  a  source  of  great  profit 
to  the  officials,  or  they  would  not  have  been  so 
long  tolerated  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  there 
must  have  been  large  opportunities  for  making 
money,  or  this  race  would  not  have  exposed  it- 
self to  so  many  dangers  and  sacrifices  by  placing 
itself  in  a  position  to  be  periodically  raided  by 
the  police.  That  the  Jews  are  now  being  forced 
to  conform  to  the  law  of  Russia  is  an  indication 
not  merely  that  the  government  has  awakened 
to  a  sense  of  its  legal  duties,  but  that  the  finan- 
cial burdens  laid  upon  the  Jews  in  Russia  are 
greater  than  they  are  willing  to  bear ;  in  other 
words,  they  are  too  poor  to  purchase  the  immu- 
nity of  former  years. 

"  Why  do  you  hate  the  Jew  ?"  I  one  day  asked 
m\'  Russian  friend. 

"  Because,"  said  he,  "  the  Jew  brings  nothing 
into  the  country,  he  takes  all  he  can  out  of  it, 
and  while  he  is  here  he  makes  the  peasant  his 
slave,  and  lives  only  for  the  sake  of  squeezing 
money  out  of  everything." 

This  was  a  strong  statement,  but  he  went  on 
to  amplify  it  by  a  variety  of  illustrations. 

After  the  Polish  insurrection  of  1863,  the  Rus- 
sian government  set  to  work  energetically  to  rus- 
sify that  country,  and  particularly  Lithuania. 
The  principal  means  they  employed,  aside  from 
acti\cly   persecuting   the   heterodox   in    religion 


THE    RUSSIAN    AND    HIS    JEW  1 07 

and  politics,  was  to  colonize  large  numbers  of 
peasants  from  the  interior  of  Russia  upon  farms 
which  had  been  confiscated.  Agricultural  imple- 
ments were  furnished  to  these  peasants,  and 
everything  was  done  to  start  them  well,  so  as  to 
form  a  nucleus  of  Russian  life  in  the  midst  of  the 
disloyal  provinces.  Twenty  years  have  passed 
since  this  great  russifying  measure  was  put  into 
force,  and  what  is  th«  result  ? 

If,  as  a  traveller,  you  come  into  a  Russian  vil- 
lage, it  is  dirtier,  if  possible,  than  those  of  the 
neighboring  Lithuanians  and  Poles.  You  ask 
for  horses  to  continue  your  journey,  and  are 
quickly  supplied  by  these  Russians;  the  price  is 
fixed,  and  you  are  about  to  pay  it  to  the  Russian 
who  brings  your  carriage  to  the  door.  He,  how- 
ever, refuses  to  take  it,  and  begs  that  you  will 
pay  the  money  not  to  him,  but  to  the  proprietor 
of  the  tavern.  You  ask  why.  He  answers  that 
he  is  not  allowed  to  take  any  money,  that  the 
horses  he  has  brought  belong  to  the  Jew.  You 
begin  to  inquire,  and  you  find  that  the  Jew  not 
only  owns  the  tavern,  but  trades  in  all  the  arti- 
cles which  the  peasants  have  to  buy.  You  learn 
also  that  the  Jew  is  creditor  to  nearly  every  peas- 
ant for  miles  around,  and  has  a  lien  upon  every- 
thing which  that  peasant  may  grow  upon  his 
land.  You  find  that  the  peasant  cultivates  his 
land  not  for  himself,  but  for  the  Jew,  and  that  all 
his  reward  is  the  privilege  of  bare  existence. 


IO«         THE    I'.ORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AXD    KAISER 

There  are  man}-  patriotic  and  humane  Russians 
who  have  y;ivcn  it  to  me  as  their  deliberate  opin- 
ion that  the  Russian  peasant  would  be  better  off 
to-day  had  he  never  been  emancipated.  He  is 
dreamy,  good-natured,  unpractical,  and  very  ig- 
norant. When  he  is  hard  pressed  for  money,  it 
is  only  too  easy  for  him  to  accept  the  loan  which 
the  accommodating  tavern-keeper  offers  him, 
particularly  if  he  has  one  or -two  glasses  of  vodka 
inside  of  him.  Like  a  child,  he  thinks  little  of 
the  ultimate  consequences  and  much  of  the  pres- 
ent enjoyment.  He  signs  the  paper  which  is 
placed  before  him,  and  believes,  of  course,  that 
he  will  easily  pay  off  his  debt  with  the  next  har- 
vest, particularly  as  the  Jew  promises  to  be  most 
accommodating,  and  not  press  for  money  pay- 
ment. He  sends,  of  course,  the  produce  of  his 
farm  to  the  Jew,  who  acts  as  broker  for  him,  and 
reserves  his  commission,  and  what  he  is  pleased 
to  consider  the  interest  on  his  money;  and  by 
some  mysterious  method  of  calculation  the  peas- 
ant is  always  the  debtor,  and  the  Jew  always 
hajipy  to  accommodate  him  still  further  on  the 
same  terms. 

As  my  Russian  friend  explained  the  situation, 
it  reminded  me  forcibly  of  several  statements  of 
the  same  kind  made  to  me  in  Georgia  and  Ala- 
bama a  few  years  ago,  where  I  visited  some 
friends,  who  knew  the  condition  of  their  com- 
munities very  well,  and  were   in   no  sense  Jew- 


THE    RUSSIAN    AND    HIS    JEW  109 

haters.  There  I  was  told  that  the  freedom  which 
the  Northern  States  had  purchased  for  the  negro 
at  the  cost  of  so  much  blood  and  treasure  had 
been  since  sold  to  the  Jew.  The  same  Jews  who 
had  learned  to  play  upon  human  nature  by  in- 
tercourse with  emancipated  serfs  found  in  the 
Southern  States  exactly  the  material  best  suited 
for  their  purposes. 

The  Jew  opens  a  general  country  store,  and 
bends  all  his  energies  towards  making  himself 
agreeable  to  the  negroes  by  letting  them  have 
whatever  they  choose  without  paying  for  it.  In 
this  manner  an  account  soon  runs  up,  in  regard 
to  which  the  negro  is  rarely  prudent  enough  to 
keep  an  exact  tally.  When  it  has  reached  a 
proper  figure,  the  Jew  presses  for  payment,  and 
of  course  the  negro  has  no  money.  But  the  Jew 
assures  the  negro  that  nothing  is  further  from  his 
purpose  than  to  do  anything  that  might  seem 
greedy.  He  waives  the  question  of  money  en- 
tirely, and  asks  only  that  the  negro  pay  him  in 
cotton,  or  perhaps  by  handing  over  a  mule  or  a 
cow,  and  by  promising  to  continue  trading  at  his 
store.  This  seems  very  magnanimous  to  the 
negro,  and  he  cheerfully  signs  away  future  crops, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  very  farm  he  is  working. 
Thus  the  negro  works  from  year  to  year,  always 
tied  to  the  soil  by  the  debt  he  owes  the  Jew,  and 
as  little  capable  of  independent  action  as  he  or 
his  ancestors  ever  were  before  1863. 


no         THE    nORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

111  the  Southern  States,  as  in  Russia,  the  hb 
eral  stranger  naturally  asks,  "  Why  do  not  the 
peasants  themselves,  or  the  negroes,  organize 
their  own  shops,  and  thus  protect  themselves 
against  extortion  and  practical  slavery?"  It  is  a 
question  easily  asked,  but  the  actual  fact  is  that 
they  do  not,  and  that  in  both  Russia  and  the 
United  States  blacks  and  peasants  are  bound  to 
the  soil  by  a  slavery  that  is  more  galling  than 
that  they  were  formerly  subjected  to,  because 
they  are  mocked  with  the  title  of  free  men. 

It  was  not  until  after  the  emancipation  of  the 
serfs,  in  1861,  that  the  Jew  question  began  to 
take  on  serious  proportions ;  for  up  to  that  time 
the  peasant  had,  in  his  landlord,  a  protector  who 
was  able  to  shield  him  from  the  consequences  of 
his  improvidence.  After  the  emancipation,  how- 
ever, the  gulf  between  peasant  and  proprietor  be- 
came as  wide  as  that  which  separated  the  black 
from  his  former  master;  and  between  these  two 
classes  there  entered  an  army  of  Jews,  who  alone 
have  profited  by  the  edict  of  1861.  The  peasants 
became  easy  victims,  owing  to  their  improvi- 
dence and  love  of  drink ;  but  the  proprietors 
soon  found  that  they  could  accomplish  nothing 
without  the  assistance  of  the  money-lender,  and, 
above  all,  the  only  man  who  could  control  the  la- 
bor market.  Jews  were,  to  be  sure,  not  allowed  to 
acquire  real  estate,  but  in  the  western  provinces 
the\'  took  charge  of  landed  property  as  agents 


THE    RUSSIAN    AND    HIS    JEW  1 13 

in  such  a  manner  that  they  had  all  the  substan- 
tial benefits  of  ownership  with  none  of  the  draw- 
backs. All  the  supplies  for  the  estate  were 
bought  of  themselves  and  charged  to  the  un- 
lucky proprietor ;  by  their  hold  upon  the  peas- 
ants they  were  able  to  enforce  labor  at  nominal 
rates,  and  nothing  prevented  them  from  exhaust- 
ing the  soil  as  rapidly  as  possible,  cutting  down 
all  the  timber,  and  when  they  had  squeezed  the 
last  kopeck  out  of  the  property,  moving  off  to 
some  other  estate  and  commencing  the  same 
process  over  again.  It  is  to  the  multiplicity  of 
such  cases  that  we  must  refer  some  of  the  pres- 
ent distress  in  Russia,  although,  of  course,  many 
other  reasons  co-operate.  I  am  informed  on 
good  authority  that,  in  spite  of  laws  to  the  con- 
trary, a  very  large  proportion  of  the  land  within 
the  pale  is  practically  in  Jewish  hands,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  peasants  who  work  upon  it.  To 
how  great  an  extent  this  is  the  case  is  as  difficult 
to  find  out  as  to  give  the  exact  number  of  Jews 
in  Russia,  for  they  have  a  direct  interest  in  de- 
ceiving the  government  in  regard  to  both  of 
these  matters,  and  have,  so  far,  succeeded  very 
well. 

A  witty  German  once  said,  sneeringly,  of  the 
Russians,  that  "every  nation  is  afflicted  with  the 
sort  of  Jew  best  suited  to  its  condition  ;"  but  if 
this  is  true,  it  is  the  most  damning  verdict  upon 
the   Poles,  whose   Jews  appear  to  be   upon  the 


114  IHK    HORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

lowest  level  of  human  existence  which  it  has  been 
my  fortune  to  meet  with.  This  aphorism  might 
be  paraphrased  by  saying  that  each  country  has 
the  Chinaman  best  suited  for  it,  and  that  there- 
fore California  should  have  been  content  with  her 
contingent  from  the  Flowery  Kingdom. 

The  public  sentiment  of  Europe — at  least,  the 
eastern  portion  of  it — might  have  been  measured 
in  the  Berlin  conference  after  the  Russo-Turkish 
war,  when  Lord  Beaconsfield  made  his  notable 
effort  in  favor  of  the  Jews.  His  proposals  did 
not  fall  upon  sympathetic  ears,  and  the  utmost 
he  accomplished  was  to  cause  the  powers  to 
bully  Roumania  into  a  formal  recognition  of  the 
Jews  as  equal  in  citizenship  with  the  rest  of  the 
people.  But  even  in  Roumania  the  law  is  almost 
a  dead  letter  by  reason  of  a  series  of  regulations 
subsequently  passed.  The  Roumanian  to-day 
dreads  an  increase  of  his  Jewish  population  al- 
most as  much  as  an  invasion  of  Russian  troops, 
and  if  the  papers  of  his  country  cry  out  against 
Russian  intolerance,  it  is  not  because  he  sympa- 
thizes with  the  Jews,  but  because  he  fears  lest 
further  persecution  in  Russia  will  make  it  more 
difficult  for  him  to  keep  them  out  of  Roumania. 

Germany  and  Austria  can  look  on  with  some- 
thing like  equanimity  w^hile  isolated  Jews  filter 
across  the  frontiers  and  merge  into  the  rest  of 
the  population.  They  still  maintain  a  pose  of 
tolerance  to  all  creeds,  but  it  would  be  hazard- 


THE    RUSSIAN    AND    HIS    JEW  I15 

ous  to  say  how  long  this  attitude  can  be  safely 
maintained.  Russia  has  not  yet  given  the  signal, 
but  it  is  not  beyond  the  realm  of  probability  to 
imagine  religious  fanaticism  so  harmonizing  with 
popular  hatred  as  to  produce  a  law  not  simply 
confining  the  Jews  to  Russian  provinces  on  the 
western  frontier,  but  actually  expelling  them  by 
thousands  and  hundreds  of  thousands  out  of  the 
country.  Could  Germany  and  Austria  look  with 
equanimity  upon  such  an  immigration  into  their 
already  crowded  countries?  Or,  aside  from  gov- 
ernmental action,  can  we  suppose  that  the  people 
of  these  countries  would  endure  such  a  Jewish 
movement  with  any  more  kindliness  than  was 
manifested  in  San  Francisco  towards  the  cargoes 
of  Chinamen  ?  Germany  and  Austria  know  that 
Russia  has  an  almost  inexhaustible  supply  of  this 
undesirable  population,  all  living  along  a  single 
strip  of  territory,  and  united  by  centuries  of  com- 
mon language,  traditions,  and  family  ties  to  such 
a  degree  as  to  make  them  a  state  within  a  state, 
as  much  so  as  the  Mormon  Church.  Up  to  with- 
in recent  years  the  Jewish  communities  have  been 
allowed  to  govern  themselves  according  to  their 
own  peculiar  laws  and  customs,  much  as  the  Chi- 
nese manage  their  own  affairs  in  Chinatown. 
These  peculiar  privileges  are  now  abolished,  but 
custom  and  tradition  amongst  them,  notably  their 
religious  preceptors,  have  so  complete  an  ascen- 
dency over  them   tlKit  the  effect  of  the  Russian 


l\C)  IIIK    I'.ORIIERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISKR 

law  upon  thcin  does  not  go  far  beyond  the  pres- 
ence of  the  poHceman. 

My  Russian  friend,  who  had  given  considerable 
attention  to  the  history  of  the  Jews,  as  well  as  to 
their  present  condition  in  Russia,  called  my  at- 
tention to  the  great  difference  between  the  Jew 
of  Russia — that  is  to  say,  the  Jew  who  calls  into 
existence  the  anti-Semitic  movement  in  Germany 
— and  his  co-religionist  who  was  driven  out  of 
Spain  about  the  time  that  Columbus  discovered 
America.  The  Jews  of  Spain,  whom  Ferdinand 
and  Isabella  expelled  from  the  country,  stood 
upon  a  relatively  high  plane  of  intellectual  as 
well  as  material  development.  In  that  age  of 
monkish  superstition  the  Jews  stood  forth  pre- 
eminent as  masters  in  many  sciences.  They  had 
enjoyed  successive  generations  of  contact  with 
highly  refined  people,  had  absorbed  the  artistic 
spirit,  \\hich  no  one  could  escape  who  lived  in 
the  Spain  of  that  time.  The  short-sighted  fanati- 
cism which  drove  them  out  into  the  world  called 
forth  much  s}'mpathy  for  them;  and  the  fame  of 
their  learning,  particularly  in  the  natural  sciences, 
did  much  to  atone  for  the  prejudice  against  their 
money -making  propensities.  Then,  too,  these 
Spanish  refugees  did  not  all  move  to  one  coun- 
try, nor  did  they  come  from  a  land  that  might 
furnish  additional  supplies  in  the  future.  The 
Jews  of  1492  scattered  themselves  broadcast  into 
nearly  every  country  of  western  Europe,  notably 


THE    RUSSIAN    AND    HIS    JEW  II 7 

Italy,  England,  Holland,  South  Germany,  and 
France.  The  Popes  of  Rome  extended  their 
protection  to  them,  and,  in  spite  of  occasional 
outbursts  of  popular  ill-will,  they  prospered,  and 
with  their  prosperity  gradually  took  on  the  color 
of  the  society  in  which  they  moved,  and  lost  cor- 
respondingly the  peculiar  characteristics  which 
are  so  conspicuous  in  the  Russian  Jew.  The 
Jews  of  four  hundred  years  ago,  who  wandered 
in  distress  to  Antwerp,  London,  Amsterdam,  Na- 
ples, Venice,  Marseilles,  Genoa,  Rome,  brought 
to  all  these  cities  talents  which  the  people  there 
knew  how  to  appreciate.  Their  appearance  there 
might  almost  be  compared  to  that  of  the  clever 
artisans  and  manufacturers  who  came  to  England 
and  Prussia  after  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantes — in  the  sense  that  the  best  people  of  the 
country  regarded  them  as  a  source  of  economic 
strength.  But  the  Jew  who  to-day  comes  from 
the  Russian  border  to  Berlin  or  Buda-Pcsth  rep- 
resents in  no  sense  a  man  of  learning,  or  even 
the  master  of  an  art  whose  acquisition  is  envied 
by  the  people  amongst  whom  he  settles.  He  rep- 
resents to  them  unscrupulous  greed  for  money, 
a  marvellous  facility  in  deception — a  man  whose 
object  in  life  seems  to  be  to  subordinate  every 
consideration  to  that  of  material  success.  All 
England  has  only  about  as  many  Jews  as  the 
capital  of  Prussia  alone,  and  the  Jew  question  as 
it  appears  to  the  (jcrman  is  intensified  by  the  re- 


Il8         THK    noRDKRIANH    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

flection  that  the  Jew  who  comes  to  him  from  the 
Kast  is  not  only  a  creature  repugnant  to  him  in- 
ilividually,  but  who  has  left  behind  him  so  vast 
a  number  of  his  co-religionists  that  if  they  once 
start  upon  an  invasion  of  western  Europe  they 
will  soon  be  in  a  position  to  dictate  terms  in  ev- 
ery Christian  capital.  The  Spanish  Jew  and  the 
Russian  Jew  are,  of  course,  allied,  if  we  go  back 
far  enough ;  but  no  Russian  or  German  finds 
any  comfort  in  reflecting  upon  the  excellence  of 
the  Jews  in  the  days  of  Columbus.  His  appre- 
hension springs  entirely  from  observing  the  Jew 
of  to-day. 

Said  my  friend  to  me  :  "  Wherever  the  Jew  has 
control  of  the  press — and  that  is  saying  a  good 
deal — )'ou  find  that  he  strenuously  preaches  tol- 
erance, in  order  that  he  may  profit  by  it.  To 
read  the  articles  by  Jews  in  newspapers  and  re- 
views, one  would  suppose  that  the  only  truly  lib- 
eral spirits  to-day  were  the  members  of  syna- 
gogues. If  you  will  take  my  word  for  it — and  I 
think  I  know  what  I  am  talking  about — there  is 
no  church  domination  that  can  be  more  narrow 
and  relentless  than  that  which  governs  the  four 
or  five  millions  of  Jews  who  occupy  both  sides  of 
the  Russian  frontier  between  the  Baltic  and  the 
Black  Sea." 

In  1877  a  Jewess  named  Ida  Katzhandel  chose 
to  turn  Roman  Catholic  and  marry  a  Pole.  The 
pair  lived  happily  for  about  a  year,  wlien  one  fine 


THE    RUSSIAN    AND    HIS    JEW  12  1 

day  the  relations  of  Ida  turned  up  while  the  hus- 
band was  away,  took  her  from  the  house,  and 
drowned  her  in  the  river  Wieprz — a  stream  which 
runs  into  the  Vistula  near  Ivan-Gorod.  The 
guilty  ones  had  taken,  of  course,  every  precau- 
tion against  discovery;  but  the  police  managed, 
somehow  or  other,  to  trace  the  crime  home,  and 
the  murderers  were  brought  to  trial  in  Lublin 
about  three  years  after  the  murder.  Two  of 
them  were  convicted  ;  one  was  sentenced  to  two 
years'  penal  servitude,  the  other  to  two  years 
confinement ;  with  regard  to  the  remainder  the 
evidence  was  so  faulty  that  they  had  to  be  set 
free,  although  there  was  no  doubt  in  the  minds 
of  the  people  in  the  neighborhood  as  to  who  had 
committed  this  outrage.  But  stranger  than  the 
crime  was  the  fact  that  during  the  days  of  this 
trial  the  space  about  the  court-house  was  filled 
with  violent  Jews,  who  praised  the  murderers  as 
martyrs  to  their  religion,  and  who  greeted  those 
who  had  been  released  as  men  to  whom  every 
honor  was  due. 

My  Russian  friend  assured  me  that  the  picture 
of  brutal  fanaticism  furnished  by  this  one  instance 
is  typical  of  the  great  mass  of  Jews  whom  the 
German  has  in  mind,  as  well  as  the  Russian,  when 
he  discusses  the  Jew  question.  One  can  scarcely 
conceive  of  grosser  religious  intolerance  than  this 
in  Spain  of  1492  or  Mexico  of  1892.  It  is  a  pict- 
ure for  which,  I  confess,  I  was  little  prepared,  and 


122         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

it  is  obvious  that  the  Jew  of  LubHn  has  but  a  dis- 
tant blood  -  relation  with  those  who  produced  a 
philosopher  like  Spinoza. 

Russians  have  told  me  that  it  is  almost  impos- 
sible to  catch  the  Jews  for  military  service,  owing 
to  the  facilities  they  enjoy  of  changing  their  dom- 
icile. The  railways  have  been  in  Russia  the  great- 
est possible  blessing  to  the  Jews,  in  that  they  give 
them  the  means  of  speedily  moving  from  place  to 
place,  transacting  business  in  parts  of  the  coun- 
try where  they  are  forbidden,  and  disappearing 
with  their  profits  to  a  place  of  safety  before  the 
government  has  become  aware  of  what  has  hap- 
pened. Forged  passports  are  readily  procured, 
and  with  these  they  move  from  point  to  point, 
sleeping  on  the  train,  and  transacting  their  busi- 
ness through  the  day.  They  avoid  as  much  as 
possible  spending  any  time  in  a  town  where  they 
might  be  called  to  account  by  the  police.  When 
the  recruiting  authorities  come  to  hunt  up  their 
Jews  for  the  military  service  which  all  Russians 
have  to  render,  they  are  usually  away  from  home, 
or  have  been  enrolled  in  some  other  town  or  vil- 
lage. If  they  are  finally  caught  and  brought  be- 
fore the  military  authorities,  they  usually  have 
papers  certifying  that  they  are  either  too  young 
or  too  old  for  the  service ;  in  fact,  the  military 
authorities  regard  it  now  as  pretty  well  proved 
that  of  the  three  million  Jews  in  the  Russian 
Empire,  hardly  one  is  of  military  age.     In  this 


THE    RUSSIAN    AND    HIS    JEW  T23 

matter  of  deceiving  the  War  Office  tlie  Jews  are 
much  assisted  by  their  local  Jewish  officials, 
whose  duty  it  is  to  register  births  and  grant  cer- 
tificates of  this  kind  ;  but  the  matter  at  last  went 
to  such  ridiculous  lengths  that  the  Russians  have 
gone  to  the  other  extreme,  and  now  attach  no 
importance  whatever  to  any  document  which  the 
Jew  may  produce,  but  draw  their  own  conclusions 
by  looking  at  him,  and  pronounce  him  of  military 
age  or  not  according  to  his  appearance  or  their  in- 
clinations. I  ventured  to  point  out  to  my  friend 
that  there  was  little  inducement  for  the  Jew  to 
enter  the  army,  where  he  was  not  apt  to  be  treat- 
ed with  much  consideration,  but  my  friend  replied 
that  the  behavior  of  the  Jew  in  regard  to  his  mil- 
itary service  was  analogous  to  his  behavior  in  re- 
gard to  all  his  obligations  to  the  state  and  every 
community  except  his  own. 

"  I  do  not  know  how  it  is  with  you  in  Amer- 
ica," said  he,  "but  with  us,  whenever  you  see  a 
Jew  who  is  rich,  you  may  be  pretty  sure  that  he 
has  either  contracted  to  furnish  food  or  clothing 
for  the  army,  or  else  has  been  several  times  bank- 
rupt. You  would  have  great  difficulty  in  discov- 
ering a  rich  Jew  who  has  not  been  bankrupt  at 
least  once." 

The  attitude  of  Germans  towards  Jews  is  nec- 
essarily most  intimately  connected  with  the 
treatment  of  them  by  the  czar,  which  illustrates, 
what  I  believe  to  be  the  fact,  that  the  Germans 


124         Tf'K    nORDERLAXD    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

who  (.liscuss  this  question  without  rcliijious  bit- 
terness are  prepared  to  treat  fairly  the  Jews  now 
in  Germany,  but  dread  the  poHtical  consequences 
of  a  further  immigration  from  the  east.  It  is 
notable  that  the  anti-Semitic  movement  sprang 
into  existence  in  Germany  at  the  same  time  that 
Alexander  III.  became  czar,  and  has  been  grow- 
ing in  proportion  as  that  sovereign  has  shown  a 
disposition  to  rid  himself  of  them  at  the  expense 
of  his  western  neighbors.  Fair-minded  Germans 
have  over  and  over  again  repudiated  the  idea 
that  they  could  object  to  Jews,  or  any  one  else, 
on  religious  grounds,  and  protested  that  in  ap- 
proaching this  question  they  did  so  strictly  as 
practical  politicians  dealing  with  a  political  state 
of  things  gravely  affecting  the  future  of  their 
country's  development.  They  do  not  dread  a 
Jewish  invasion  from  the  west,  for  that  Jew  is 
no  longer  the  Jew  of  Poland,  but  the  Jew  who 
has  conformed  in  many  ways  to  the  life  and 
thought  of  his  neighbors  in  Holland,  Belgium, 
England,  and  France.  The  Jew  question  in  Ger- 
many could  be  easily  settled  if  England  would 
agree  to  accept  them  first  after  they  left  Poland, 
and  send  them  on  to  Germany  only  after  they 
had  spent  a  generation  on  her  soil,  far  from  the 
influences  that  oppress  them  in  Warsaw  and 
Kovno. 

That  the  Jew  question  in  Germany  has  refer- 
ence to  fears  for  the  future  rather  than  anxiety 


THE    RUSS[AN    AND    HIS   JEW  127 

in  regard  to  the  present  is  illustrated  to  some 
extent  by  the  fact  that  in  Germany  all  religious 
denominations  are  treated  as  equal  before  the 
law,  and  if  a  Jew  in  Germany  complains  that  his 
position  in  society  is  not  as  desirable  as  he  could 
wish,  it  is  a  complaint  that  might  just  as  well  be 
made  in  America,  or  even  in  England.  The  Ger- 
man Jew  complains  that  his  co-religionists  are 
not  often  selected  for  military  commands,  and 
argues  that  he  is  therefore  not  equal  before  the 
law.  The  Jew  is  not  often  found  as  an  officer 
in  the  German  army  simply  because  the  majority 
of  German  officers  do  not  desire  to  serve  with 
him.  If  the  officers  of  a  Prussian  regiment  de- 
sired a  Jew  to  become  one  of  their  number,  there 
is  no  law  in  the  country  that  would  stand  in 
the  way ;  for  in  this  matter  of  becoming  an  offi- 
cer the  Jew  stands  on  a  footing  as  good  as  and 
no  better  than  a  Christian.  Every  candidate  for 
epaulets  in  the  German  army  submits  his  name 
to  the  regiment  in  which  he  desires  to  serve,  and 
has  to  be  elected  into  the  regiment,  much  as 
though  he  were  applying  for  admission  into  a 
rowing  club,  or  any  other  semi -social  organiza- 
tion. The  present  German  custom  is  an  excel- 
lent one,  and  the  Jews  who  complain  against  it 
only  advertise  the  fact  that  they  have  not  yet 
reached  a  point  where  their  fellow-countrymen 
regard  them  as  the  most  desirable  leaders  of 
troops. 


I2S  IHK    r.ORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISEU 

Gcniuiu}',  with  ;i  [)opulati()n  less  llum  fifty 
millions,  has,  accordiiiy;  to  the  census  of  1890, 
567,884  Jews,  a  trifle  over  one  per  cent,  of  the 
population,  and  a  larger  number  than  the  whole 
of  her  standing  army.  Of  this  number  Prussia 
alone  has  372,058,  yet  nowhere  have  the  Jews 
more  enlightened  champions  than  amongst  Ger- 
mans who  are  not  even  of  the  Jewish  faith,  nota- 
bly the  editors  of  such  papers  as  the  Nation  and 
t\\Q  Frcisiiuiigc,  both  of  whom  are  active  members 
of  the  German  Parliament.  These  men  and  the 
part}'  the)'  represent  scout  the  idea  that  so  small 
a  proportion  of  the  whole  population  can  possi- 
bly become  a  danger,  and  they  loudly  urge  the 
government  to  appoint  Jews  to  the  most  im- 
portant military  and  judicial  posts  —  in  other 
words,  to  treat  a  Jew  not  as  an  alien,  but  as  a 
thorough  German.  But  these  statesmen  have 
not  yet  convinced  the  great  mass  of  the  people 
that  the  Jew,  by  becoming  a  citizen  of  the  Ger- 
man Empire,  necessarily  becomes  a  German  other 
than  in  name  and  speech.  Prussia,  in  1850,  made 
her  citizenship  equal  to  all,  irrespective  of  relig- 
ious denomination,  and  has  treated  the  Jew  sub- 
stantially as  the  Christian,  at  least  before  the 
law,  and  the  Imperial  Constitution  of  1871  was 
framed  in  the  same  spirit  of  toleration. 

German  politicians  who  to-day  champion  the 
cause  of  the  Jews  tell  us  that  during  the  wars  of 
liberation  against  Napoleon  I.  five  and  a  half  per 


THE    RUSSIAN    AND    HIS    JEW  I2g 

cent,  of  the  Jews  who  were  of  the  military  age  en- 
tered the  Prussian  army  as  volunteers,  and  that 
one  of  the  first  soldiers  to  earn  the  Iron  Cross 
in  those  wars  was  a  Jew.  From  that  day  to  this 
the  Jews  in  Germany  have  borne  a  good  record 
in  the  ranks  of  the  army,  although  few  of  them 
have  become  officers. 

Dr.  Phillippson  has  raised  a  monument  to  Ger- 
man Jews  in  connection  with  the  war  of  1870 
by  publishing  the  result  of  investigations  made 
among  his  co-religionists  in  132  communities. 
His  conclusions  are  that  the  Jewish  population 
furnished  its  full  complement  to  the  active  army 
during  that  struggle,  and  earned  a  very  respecta- 
ble number  of  Iron  Crosses  as  the  reward  of 
bravery.  The  Jews  have  warm  friends  in  Ger- 
many, both  in  Parliament  and  in  the  press,  and 
the  merits  of  the  Jew  question  are  pretty  thor- 
oughly discussed  there  from  every  point  of  view. 
In  no  community  is  religious  toleration  so  much 
a  matter  of  principle  as  in  Germany,  and  the 
idea  of  making  a  distinction  between  Jew  and 
Christian  on  religious  grounds  never  entered  the 
mind  of  a  practical  German  legislator.  Every 
German  school -boy  is  brought  up  to  regard  the 
greatness  of  Prussia  as  owing  largely  to  the  ref- 
uge it  has  afforded  in  past  ages  to  the  persecuted 
of  all  other  countries,  whether  Protestants  from 
France  or  Jews  from  Spain.  But  even  amongst 
liberal  Germans  there  is  growing  up  a  feeling 
9 


130         THE    HORPERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

that  the  Jews  of  their  country  arc  more  than 
their  mere  numbers  represent ;  that  they  are  to 
some  extent  a  pohtical  society  whose  organiza- 
tion covers  the  world,  and  whose  aims  are  not  al- 
together those  of  the  citizens  amongst  whom  they 
are  protected.  No  Protestant  German  has  ill-will 
towards  his  fellow-citizen  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
faith,  and  if  Lutherans  ever  show  a  disposition 
to  depart  from  their  principle  of  toleration  it 
is  when  they  have  reason  to  dread  the  influence 
of  Jesuits  as  a  political  power,  whose  centre  is 
not  within  the  limits  of  the  empire.  The  Jewish 
question  is  growing  in  importance  amongst  Ger- 
mans, as  it  has  grown  in  importance  in  Hungary, 
in  Roumania,  and,  above  all,  in  Russia.  It  is 
bound  to  go  on  increasing  in  proportion  as  the 
Jews  decline  to  identify  themselves  completely 
with  the  people  amongst  whom  they  trafific  and 
make  their  money.  It  is  not  a  trifling  matter 
that  the  people  of  these  countries  regard  the 
Israelite  as  one  of  a  different  nation  and  race, 
but  it  is  vastly  more  serious  when  amongst  these 
people  there  develops  a  widespread  fear  that  the 
supply  of  Jews  from  Russia  may  assume  propor- 
tions still  more  disastrous. 


SIDE   LIGHTS   ON  THE  GERMAN   SOLDIER 


Y  friend  Captain  Zinnowitz 
came  to  dinner  with  me  one 
night  in  Berlin.  He  was  in- 
vited particularly  to  meet 
Remington,  and  we  spent  a 
long  evening  together  talking 
about  his  work  as  an  ofificer 
of  the  Prussian  army.  I  knew 
that  he  had  been  into  Rus- 
sian Poland  several  times  for 
the  benefit  of  his  government, 
and  therefore  drew  the  con- 
versation on  to  the  best  means 
of  succeeding  at  this  delicate 
work. 

"  When  I  go  into  Poland," 
said  he,  "  I  am  not  an  officer 
any  longer ;  I  dress  my  hair 
differently,  and  become  sim- 
ply  plain    Mr.    ,  who   is 

seeking  employment  as  a  hy- 
draulic engineer.     T  have,  of 
course,  an  address  in  a  small  provincial  German 
town,  from  which  all  my  letters  come  and  where 


132         THE    r.ORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

I  have  a  trusted  friend  ready,  to  answer  all  ques- 
tions in  regard  to  my  occupation  and  identity 
should  the  Russian  secret  police  make  inquiries 
in  regard  to  me.  Last  year  I  was  instructed  to 
report  upon  a  line  of  railw^ay  projected  at  a  cer- 
tain point  in  Poland,  and  for  that  reason  hired  a 
Jew  to  pilot  me.  We  went  together  for  some 
distance,  when  the  Jew  told  me  that  there  were 
two  policemen  on  the  train  evidently  on  our 
tracks,  and  that  he  would  go  no  farther.  I  went 
on  alone,  and  at  the  next  station  jumped  off  on 
the  side  farthest  from  the  railway  station,  and 
made  for  the  woods.  I  had  not  gone  far,  how- 
ever, when  the  two  policemen  overtook  me,  and 
demanded  to  know  what  my  business  was.  Of 
course  I  had  to  make  up  a  plausible  story,  and 
therefore  remarked  that  I  was  buying  wood,  and 
had  to  inspect  the  forests  of  the  neighborhood. 
Upon  this,  one  of  them  said  that  there  were  no 
forests  in  the  direction  in  which  I  was  going,  and 
that  I  must  accompany  them  to  the  police  sta- 
tion. To  this  I  objected,  protesting  that  I  had 
been  informed  of  a  vast  amount  of  timber  cut 
and  stored  near  here.  Now  this  timber  had  all 
been  cut  for  the  purposes  of  the  railway  I  was 
to  report  upon.  The  Russian  policemen  admitted 
that  such  was  the  case,  much  to  my  satisfaction, 
but  said  that  they  must  take  me  to  headquarters, 
under  any  circumstances,  where  I  would  be  ex- 
amined as  a  matter  of  form.     So  off  we  went  to- 


UKAGOON    OKl'ICER   IN    STREET   DRESS 


SIDE    LIGHTS    ON    THE    GERMAN    SOLDIER  135 

gether,  the  policemen  leading  me  into  the  very 
fort  that  I  did  not  dream  of  getting  into,  because 
it  was  a  new  one,  guarded  with  particular  jeal- 
ousy, and  one  about  which  my  government  was 
very  anxious  to  gain  accurate  information.  As 
we  marched  along,  however,  the  question  of  how 
to  get  rid  of  my  secret  notes  embarrassed  me,  for 
had  anything  of  this  kind  been  found  upon  me, 
of  course  I  should  have  been  taken  out  and 
hanged.  To  accomplish  my  object  I  pulled  out 
cigars,  which  I  offered  to  my  guardians  ;  they  ac- 
cepted them  with  an  ill  grace,  but  did  not  smoke 
them.  As  I  proceeded  to  light  mine,  I  held  with 
the  cigar  a  bit  of  the  tissue-paper  on  which  I  had 
made  memoranda,  and  as  my  match  burned  it  lit 
not  only  my  cigar,  but  consumed  the  tissue- 
paper  I  held  in  the  hollow  of  my  hand.  I  had  to 
allow  my  cigar  to  go  out  several  times  in  order 
to  get  rid  of  the  notes  I  had  made,  and  heaved 
a  great  sigh  of  relief  when  the  last  piece  was  de- 
stroyed. When  we  reached  the  fortress  I  was 
taken  to  the  commandant  and  inspected  careful- 
ly ;  that  is  to  say,  every  part  of  my  person  was 
investigated  to  see  if  I  had  not  concealed  the 
smallest  scrap  of  paper.  My  passport  was  then 
copied  out,  and  I  was  allowed  to  go.  They  or- 
dered me  back  the  same  way,  but,  by  dint  of 
very  energetic  language,  I  succeeded  in  persuad- 
ing them  to  let  me  pass  on  to  the  next  town, 
by  which  means  I  was  enabled  to  go  completely 


136  IHE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

tlirough  the  works  of  the  fort,  and  report  exactly 
upon  their  extent.  On  arrival  home,  after  sev- 
eral more  episodes  of  the  same  kind,  my  govern- 
ment suggested  to  me  the  desirability  of  knowing 
more  of  the  interior  construction  of  this  work,  and 
when  I  see  you  next  year  I  will  tell  you  some 
more." 

Neither  Remington  nor  I  ever  saw  him  again. 
He  spoke  of  his  adventures  as  lightly  as  though 
he  were  recounting  some  steeple-chase  episode, 
and  regarded  quite  as  naturally  that  he  should 
run  the  risk  of  being  hanged  from  day  to  day  as 
that  he  should  wear  his  uniform  and  go  to  pa- 
rade. A  few  months  after  this  little  dinner  I 
dined  with  another  interesting  character,  a  young 
army  surgeon  with  whom  I  had  long  had  friendly 
relations.  He  appeared  rather  depressed,  at  first 
reluctant  to  answer  my  questions,  but  finally  told 
me  this: 

"  I  have  just  come  from  Thorn,  a  fortress  of 
Prussia  on  the  Vistula,  close  to  the  Russian  fron- 
tier. Last  night  I  held  the  hand  of  a  man  who 
died  in  a  semi-delirious  state.  He  had  crawled 
across  the  frontier  with  great  difificulty,  for  he 
was  in  the  last  stages  of  disease,  and  had  been 
brought  down  the  river  to  this  fortress  to  the 
military  hospital.  He  gave  a  name  that  is  not  in 
the  army  list,  and  died  without  our  being  able  to 
make  out  very  much  about  him,  I  presume  that 
now  the  authorities  have  discovered  what  they 


CUIRASSIER 

From  a  Ski;tch  in  Unter  den  Linden 


SIDE    LIGHTS    ON    THE    GERMAN    SOLDIER  1 39 

wish  ;  but  I  was  forced  to  leave  him  immediately 
after  his  death.  The  night  before  he  died  he 
managed,  with  great  difficulty,  to  let  me  know 
this  much :  He  was  an  officer  in  the  Prussian 
army,  had  disguised  himself  as  a  Lithuanian  peas- 
ant, and  had  sought  employment  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  a  fortress  in  Poland.  For  this  purpose 
he  had  to  make  himself  as  dirty  and  ragged  as 
the  peasants  about  him,  and  to  harden  his  hands 
and  features  so  that  he  might  not  arouse  the  sus- 
picion of  his  employers.  He  lived  in  a  peasant's 
hut,  and  after  several  weeks  succeeded  in  being 
employed  to  carry  wood  into  the  fortress.  Little 
by  little  he  succeeded  in  gaining  the  information 
he  desired,  partly  by  pacing  off  distances,  part- 
ly by  personal  inspection,  and  partly  by  careful 
questioning  of  his  fellow-workmen.  The  nervous 
exhaustion  which  followed  this  painful  kind  of 
work — laboring  with  his  hands  all  day,  and  then 
using  the  night  hours  for  his  scientific  work,  com- 
bined with  the  hourly  fear  of  detection  —  pro- 
duced a  state  of  body  and  mind  which  ended  in 
a  fever.  The  notes  he  had  made  were  too  valu- 
able to  be  abandoned,  so  he  determined,  cost 
what  it  might,  to  get  into  Germany  before  he 
died.  He  just  managed  to  succeed.  The  Prus- 
sian Intelligence  Department  has  now  complete 
knowledge  on  one  point  at  least,  and  another 
officer  has  died  happy  in  the  consciousness  of 
having  done  his  duty." 


I40         THE    I50KDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

This  little  anecdote  is  one  of  hundreds  illus- 
trating the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  keeping  up 
what  the  Germans  consider  the  Intelligence  De- 
partment, or  the  Great  General  Staff  of  their 
arm}'.  Every  German  officer  knows  that  if  he 
wishes  a  furlough  for  six  months,  he  can  always 
get  it  accorded  provided  he  gives  his  superiors 
the  assurance  that  he  means  to  employ  his  time 
not  in  seeking  pleasure,  but  in  gathering  infor- 
mation valuable  to  his  country;  he  may  wish  to 
learn  a  new  language,  to  make  a  report  upon  a 
particular  equipment  of  a  particular  foreign  army, 
to  study  horse-breeding.  No  matter  what  it  is, 
inquiry  of  every  kind  is  encouraged,  provided  it 
bears  directly  or  indirectly  upon  the  efficiency  of 
the  service. 

To  illustrate  the  care  taken  of  the  soldier  in 
the  German  army,  let  me  mention  the  subject 
of  shoes.  There  is  in  Berlin,  in  a  very  out-of- 
the-way  place,  a  government  museum  devoted 
entircl}'  to  hygiene.  The  famous  Professor  Koch 
is  the  head  of  this  excellent  institution,  or  at 
least  he  was  so  when  I  last  visited  it.  Among 
the  exhibits  the  most  interesting  to  me  was  a 
lot  of  boots  and  shoes,  with  explanatory  legends 
in  regard  to  the  relative  merit  of  them  for 
marching  purposes.  The  ones  that  appear  to 
have  given  the  greatest  satisfaction  were  very 
broad  in  the  toes ;  in  fact,  so  broad  that  the  foot 
appeared  to  have  no  support    except  upon  the 


A    HEAVY    SWEI.I, — GUAKU    HUSSAR 


SIDE    LIGHTS    ON    THE    GERMAN    SOLDIER  143 

sole,  thus  allowing  the  greatest  possible  room  for 
the  expansion  of  the  bones.  In  lieu  of  stock- 
ings, the  article  recommended  was  a  woollen  rag 
cut  square  and  folded  over  the  foot  according 
to  the  taste  of  the  wearer.  The  great  advan- 
tage of  these  square  woollen  rags  over  the  stock- 
ing is  that  while  the  stocking  is  apt  to  wear  a 
hole  either  at  the  heel  or  at  the  toe,  this  woollen 
rag  is  shifted  every  time  the  boot  is  taken  off. 
and  thus  insures  an  equal  distribution  of  friction 
over  all  its  parts.  When  the  woollen  rag  is  tak- 
en off  it  is  very  easily  washed,  and  dries  much 
more  readily  than  the  stocking;  it  is  also  more 
conveniently  folded  in  the  knapsack,  and  per- 
haps even  on  the  score  of  economy  has  some- 
thing in  its  favor.  Between  this  excellent  wool- 
len rag  and  the  care  taken  in  regard  to  the 
selection  of  boots  and  shoes,  so  much  has  been 
achieved  for  the  foot-gear  of  the  soldier  that  it 
has  now  become  axiomatic  that  any  difficulty 
with  a  soldier's  feet  must  be  presumed  to  spring 
from  a  soldier's  own  carelessness.  There  are 
two  things  which  the  German  officer  does  not 
and  cannot  condone  —  one  is  non- efficiency  of 
the  soldier's  rifle,  the  other  a  chafed  foot.  If 
either  of  these  two  takes  place  on  the  march 
or  during  the  manoeuvres,  the  soldier  is  immedi- 
ately punished  with  arrest,  and  is  not  allowed 
to  offer  any  excuse.  During  the  different  ma- 
nojuvres  of  German  army  corps  that  I  have  at- 


144         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

tended,  I  can  recall  but  a  few  cases  of  foot-sore 
men  in  the  course  of  a  day's  work,  and  yet  at 
all  these  field  operations  forced  marches  are  a 
feature,  in  order  to  test  the  endurance  of  officers 
and  men.  The  secret  of  this  uniform  excellence, 
as  regards  marching  powers,  lies  in  the  training 
which  the  men  receive.  When  they  enter  their 
company  as  recruits  in  October,  the  first  thing 
that  is  impressed  upon  their  minds  is  the  im- 
portance of  the  shoe  and  the  musket.  No  pains 
are  spared  in  giving  the  men  at  the  start  com- 
fortable foot-gear,  and  they  are  expected  to  look 
after  this  with  as  much  interest  as  if  it  were  a 
chronometer.  In  the  spring  following,  when  the 
snow  is  off  the  ground,  marches  are  undertaken, 
and  these  are  regulated  as  carefully  as  are  the 
strokes  and  the  courses  of  the  college  crew  un- 
der the  hands  of  the  trainer.  Each  day  the  men 
march  half  a  mile  or  so  farther  than  the  day 
before  ;  each  day  they  carry  on  their  back  an 
ounce  or  two  more  ;  each  day  the  speed  they  are 
able  to  maintain  is  carefully  noted  ;  in  fact,  the 
record  of  a  company's  marching  from  day  to  day, 
until  late  into  the  summer,  when  they  move  into 
the  open  country,  is  kept  as  minutely  as  if  it 
were  a  single  picked  company  training  for  a 
match  or  competitive  drill.  The  German  soldier 
is  educated  and  trained  for  the  purpose  of  fight- 
ing, and  to  have  a  man  fall  out  before  he  reach- 
es the  fire-line  is  looked  upon  as  quite  as  much 


SIDE    LIGHTS    ON    THE    GERMAN    SOLDIER  1 47 

a  disaster  as  if  he  had  been  shot  and  wounded 
by  the  enemy.  The  art  of  war,  as  practised  in 
Germany,  is  very  much  the  art  of  "getting 
there,"  and  it  is  the  general  who  posts  himself 
most  advantageously  at  the  critical  moment  that 
may  be  assumed  to  have  won  the  battle.  The 
marching  of  German  troops  is  something  quite 
extraordinary,  not  in  the  performance  of  any  in- 
dividual man  or  company  or  regiment,  but  in  the 
fact  that  the  commander-in-chief  can  count  upon 
all  the  parts  of  his  command  accomplishing  a 
very  high  average  of  collective  work,  each  part 
doing  substantially  as  much  as  the  other. 

The  so-called  "  iron  ration  "  is  an  institution 
to  which  the  Germans  attach  great  importance. 
It  is  the  soldier's  food  in  a  preserved  shape,  and 
not  to  be  opened  except  in  an  extreme  case 
of  necessity ;  as,  for  instance,  on  a  forced  march 
preceding  a  battle.  In  ordinary  times  he  must 
forage  and  requisition  as  well  as  he  can,  but  the 
iron  ratioii-must  not  be  touched,  no  matter  how 
weary  he  is  after  his  day's  march.  The  prepara- 
tion of  this  iron  ration  has  been  the  subject  of 
extensive  chemical  investigation  in  Germany,  in 
order  to  arrive  at  the  article  which  concentrates 
the  greatest  amount  of  nutrition  in  the  most 
enduring  shape ;  the  factories  where  this  iron 
ration  is  prepared  are  not  open  to  public  inspec- 
tion, although  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  French 
have  full  information  on  this  subject. 


148         THE    nORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

The  Germans  are  very  thrifty  in  their  habits, 
and  no  one  visiting  a  German  barrack- room 
would  suspect  their  militarj'  authorities  of  ex- 
travagance, yet  in  regard  to  uniforms  they  seem 
to  us  extremely  liberal ;  each  soldier  has  five 
uniforms  for  varying  degrees  of  work.  The  most 
inexpensive  is  the  coarse  linen  one  used  in  sum- 
mer about  the  barracks,  and  the  most  valuable 
one  is  that  which  he  wears  on  extraordinary  fes- 
tive occasions,  as,  for  instance,  the  grand  review 
of  the  Guards  in  the  spring  of  the  year ;  but  be- 
}'ond  all  those  which  he  wears  at  more  or  less 
frequent  intervals  is  the  uniform  which  he  puts 
on  when  the  Emperor  issues  his  order  to  mobil- 
ize for  war.  Then  is  taken  out  the  absolutely 
new  uniform,  and  with  this  he  marches  to  the 
front.  The  troops  that  marched  to  the  frontier 
in  1870  looked  as  though  ready  for  a  review 
rather  than  for  the  dirty  work  of  campaigning. 

There  is  a  tyranny  amongst  German  ofificers 
which  would  strike  us  as  outrageous — not  tyran- 
ny over  soldiers,  but  tyranny  of  superior  officers 
over  inferior  ones.  It  can  only  be  explained  by 
the  rules  governing  the  admission  of  officers  to 
the  German  army.  In  most  countries,  as  with 
us,  admission  to  the  army  is  gained  by  passing 
stiff  examinations  and  nothing  more.  In  the  Ger- 
man army, not  only  must  a  series  of  difficult  exami- 
nations be  passed,  but  the  candidate  for  epaulets 
must  at  the  same  time  be   chosen   into  a   regi- 


THE    OLD    CKNERAL 


SIDE    IJCHTS    ON    THE    (iERMAN    SOLDIER  151 

ment  by  the  officers  of  that  regiment.  Thus  a 
young  man  who  may  have  shown  his  proficiency 
in  military  science  may  yet  fail  to  become  an 
officer  if  he  is  regarded  as  a  disagreeable  mess- 
fellow  by  every  regiment  in  the  army.  Perhaps 
it  is  possible  to  plead  that  any  man  who  cannot 
get  an  election  to  a  single  regiment  had  better 
remain  out  of  the  army,  on  the  presumption  that 
if  he  is  unpopular  with  those  who  have  every 
opportunity  of  knowing  about  him,  he  would 
most  likely  be  an  unpopular  officer  with  the 
men,  and  consequently  be  a  detriment  to  the 
service.  Nominally  the  German  army  is  the 
most  democratic  institution  in  Europe,  for  all 
able-bodied  men  must  serve  in  it,  without  dis- 
tinction of  race,  color,  or  rank.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  veto  power  which  a  regimental  mess 
has  upon  would-be  members  is  not  a  serious  de- 
terrent to  candidates,  because,  as  a  rule,  the  man 
who  desires  to  become  an  officer  usually  has 
friends  in  some  regiment  of  the  service ;  and  it 
is  only  fair  to  say  that  no  German  regiment 
would  ever  exclude  a  man  without  reasons 
which  would  be  considered  valid  by  the  Depart- 
ment of  War.  The  present  rules,  however,  have 
this  advantage,  that  they  create  among  the  officers 
of  a  regiment  not  merely  the  feeling  that  they 
are  parts  of  a  great  machine,  but  that  they  are  a 
social  organization  bound  together  by  ties  as  in- 
timate as  those  uniting  a  lodge  of  Freemasons; 


152         THE    BORDKRLAND    OF    CZAR    AND     KAISKR 

that  they  have  to  stand  one  by  the  other  in 
peace  and  war,  and  that  the  honor  of  one  is  the 
honor  of  all.  The  regiments  of  the  German 
army  differ  as  famih'es  differ.  In  some  regi- 
ments names  reproduce  themselves  for  centuries 
back,  and  also  groups  of  names,  showing  that 
the  traditions  of  social  life  have  passed  down 
from  one  generation  to  another  in  one  unbroken 
line  from  a  time  when  Prussia  was  merely  a 
province  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Life  in  a  regi- 
mental mess  is  so  intimate  that  the  admission  to 
it  of  an  outsider  is  a  matter  of  grave  debate  on 
the  part  of  all  members,  from  the  colonel  down  ; 
and  the  greatest  pains  are  taken  that  the  candi- 
date shall  sustain  the  traditions  which  the  regi- 
ment has  accumulated.  When  the  German  offi- 
cer becomes  a  member  of  a  regiment,  almost  all 
his  actions  are  influenced  by  the  opinion  of  his 
superior  officers  —  even  matrimony.  No  officer 
can  marry  without  the  consent  of  his  colonel, 
and  this  consent  can  be  obtained  only  after  a 
careful  inquiry  into  all  the  circumstances  sur- 
rounding the  proposed  alliance.  First,  is  the 
young  lady  suitable  for  association  with  the 
wives  of  the  other  officers  ?  Secondly,  will  the 
bridegroom  be  able  to  live  respectably  and  bring 
up  his  family?  Thirdly,  are  his  means  or  those 
of  his  wife  invested  in  proper  securities,  so  that 
he  is  not  liable  to  be  expelled  by  reason  of 
bankruptcy  ?     These   precautions   seem    exceed- 


SIDE    LIGHTS    ON    THE    GERMAN    SOLDIER  1 55 

ingly  paternal,  but  I  am  assured  that  they  pre- 
vent a  great  deal  of  unhappiness,  for  a  young 
ofificer  is  very  apt  to  contract  matrimony  with- 
out reference  to  the  future  means  of  support  ; 
and,  moreover,  is  apt  to  be  more  rash  than  he 
would  be  if  he  could  see  himself  through  the 
eyes  of  more  experienced  men. 

This  paternal  care  is  also  illustrated  by  the 
attitude  of  German  military  authorities  in  re- 
gard to  the  duel.  Fighting  is  happily  rare 
amongst  German  officers,  owing  to  its  discour- 
agement by  the  present  emperor,  and  the  regu- 
lations governing  the  appeal  to  the  sword.  The 
German  army  has  decided  that  all  duelling  is 
wrong,  and  that  it  can  only  be  condoned  in 
cases  where  every  other  remedy  has  been  tried 
and  found  insuf^cient.  German  officers  have 
courts  of  honor  convened  for  the  special  pur- 
pose of  entertaining  charges  which  would  lead 
to  a  duel ;  before  these  courts  only  the  most 
delicate  personal  matters  are  tried,  and  the 
question  determined  as  to  how  far  an  apology 
can  be  brought  about  or  a  duel  avoided.  Any 
officer  who  ventures  upon  a  duel  without  hav- 
ing received  first  the  consent  of  a  court  of  honor 
renders  himself  liable  to  immediate  disgrace  by 
dismissal.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  these  courts  of 
honor  do  an  enormous  amount  towards  making 
duelling  difficult,  if  not  impossible. 

The  social   position    of   the    German    officers 


156         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

is  the  most  coveted  in  Germany.  This  is  not 
merely  because  as  a  rule  German  officers  spring 
from  ancient  or  noble  families,  or  that  their  reg- 
imental messes  are  very  paternally  managed,  so 
as  to  exclude  undesirable  elements.  He  is  rec- 
ognized, over  and  above  that,  as  of  a  superior 
training  intellectually,  as  a  hard  worker,  and  one 
to  whom  the  nation  looks  for  defence  iit  case  of 
war.  A  foreign  invasion  is  at  all  times  so  pres- 
ent, to  the  mind  of  the  German  that  the  army 
never  for  a  moment  loses  its  great  significance 
to  the  people.  With  us,  our  men  are  so  far  away 
on  the  outskirts  of  civilization  that  we  scarcely 
hear  of  them,  and  many  an  iVmerican  has  grown 
to  manhood  without  being  able  to  describe  the 
uniform  of  the  American  army.  The  German 
officer  always  wears  his  uniform,  and  wherever 
he  moves  represents  the  majesty  of  the  law  as 
well  as  the  national  power.  If  a  landlord  wishes 
to  recommend  his  beer- room  to  you.  he  can 
say  nothing  higher  than  that  it  is  frequented  by 
officers.  A  theatre  in  which  officers  do  not  ap- 
pear is  considered  to  have  sunk  below  the  level 
of  good  society.  Officers  at  German  dinners  and 
balls  are  much  coveted,  for  the  officer  is  assumed 
to  have  good-breeding,  and  to  be  in  all  respects 
a  cultivated  man.  During  the  great  military 
operations  in  the  autumn,  officers  are  quartered 
upon  the  proprietors  of  the  neighborhood,  and 
far  from  this  being  regarded  as  a  nuisance,  those 


UIILAN    OI'KICER    IN    FIELD    TRIM 


SIDE    LIGHTS    ON    THE    GERMAN    SOLDIER  159 

who  have  officers  billeted  upon  them  consider 
the  circumstance  rather  agreeable  than  other- 
wise. When  parades  and  reviews  are  the  order 
of  the  day,  when  traffic  is  blocked  upon  the 
streets,  the  friendship  of  an  officer  is  more  than 
sentimental  pleasure,  for  he  can  take  you  through 
all  the  lines  which  the  police  hold  against  the 
great  army  of  citizens.  An  officer  can  go  any- 
where in  uniform,  and  enjoys  social  advantages 
from  the  very  moment  of  putting  on  his  shoul- 
der-straps which  men  in  other  walks  of  life  do 
not  attain  until  they  have  distinguished  them- 
selves very  much  indeed.  It  is  in  Germany  a 
great  thing  to  go  to  court,  and  very  few  ever  suc- 
ceed in  entering  that  charmed  circle  excepting 
through  the  army.  An  officer  goes  to  court  as  a 
matter  of  course,  although  if  his  wife  is  not  of 
a  certain  rank  she  may  be  excluded.  In  England 
pretty  much  everybody  goes  to  court  who  choos- 
es to  incur  the  expense  of  the  court  dress,  and 
all  Americans  that  come  to  London  are  pre- 
sented to  the  queen  if  they  choose.  The  late 
Mr.  William  Walter  Phelps  remarked  recently 
that  in  Germany  no  American  had  been  present- 
ed at  court  in  eighteen  years,  unless  by  special 
request  either  of  the  Department  of  State  or 
for  some  corresponding  official  reason.  This 
gives  one  an  idea  of  the  enormous  importance 
attaching  in  Germany  to  the  mere  formal 
presentation   to  the   sovereign,  which  causes  so 


I  Co         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

much  heart-burning  amongst  those  who  cannot 
get  it. 

The  extraordinary  social  advantages  enjoyed 
by  the  German  officer,  and  the  pecuniary  respon- 
sibility growing  naturally  from  such  advantage, 
make  his  small  pay,  which  amounts  only  to  about 
a  dollar  a  day  in  the  case  of  a  first  lieutenant,  ap- 
pear even  smaller  than  it  is.  An  American  lady 
who  had  been  spending  a  winter  in  Dresden 
told  me  that  all  the  bachelors  of  the  garrison 
were  furnished  with  a  list  of  marriageable  wom- 
en, each  name  ornamented  with  the  property  she 
might  be  expected  to  inherit.  This,  I  have  no 
doubt,  was  a  mistake  on  her  part,  but  it  is  a  very 
common  one.  German  officers  stationed  in  de- 
sirable towns  are  very  apt  to  get  into  debt,  and 
have  to  choose  between  leaving  the  army  in  dis- 
grace or  marrying  a  rich  girl.  This  explains  why 
it  is  that  so  many  officers  in  Germany  have  mar- 
ried Jewesses,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  no  Jew  can 
become  an  officer.  I  do  not  pretend  that  Ger- 
man officers  are  more  mercenary  than  those  of 
other  armies,  but  as  there  are  so  many  of  them, 
nearly  30,000  in  time  of  peace,  the  number  of  bad 
ones  must  necessarily  be  great.  The  same  ten- 
dency I  have  heard  complained  of  in  the  English 
army,  where  the  pay  is  correspondingly  small  and 
the  social  demands  equally  great.  From  my  own 
experience  in  Germany  the  officers  would  appear 
to  have  married  for  love,  and  to  be  very  happy 


SIDE    LIGHTS    ON    THE    GERMAN    SOLDIER  163 

in  consequence.  The  number  of  those  who  get 
into  debt  and  fail  to  secure  a  rich  wife  is  consid- 
erable, although  it  makes  no  particular  ripple  on 
the  surface;  such  men  simply  disappear,  and  turn 
up  sooner  or  later  in  America,  where  they  take 
employment  as  coachmen,  waiters,  teachers,  or 
instructors  in  riding-schools.  The  change  of  life 
is  very  violent,  and  is  adopted  only  as  preferable 
to  suicide. 

The  number  of  German  officers  one  sees  on  the 
streets  is  remarkably  small  compared  to  the  size 
of  the  garrison,  and  the  explanation  of  this  fact 
is  that  they  are  too  hard  at  work  to  have  any 
time  for  exhibiting  themselves.  At  four  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  during  the  favorable  seasons  of 
the  year,  they  are  up  and  in  the  saddle,  out  with 
their  men  drilling  them  with  all  their  might ;  their 
afternoon  is  occupied  with  barrack-work,  reports, 
and  a  lot  of  odds  and  ends  of  routine  work,  which 
leaves  them  pretty  well  tired  out  when  evening 
arrives.  In  France,  Russia,  Italy,  and  Austria  of- 
ficers seem  to  have  very  much  more  time  on  their 
hands,  to  judge  by  the  appearance  of  the  streets 
alone.  In  England  and  America  the  officer  may 
be  regarded  as  having  great  difficulty  in  employ- 
ing his  time  so  as  not  to  be  bored,  unless  he  is  a 
singular  character,  regarded  by  his  comrades  as 
rather  a  "  dig,"  or  one  riding  a  hobby.  The  Ger- 
man officer  not  only  has  an  amount  of  daily  rou- 
tine work  far  in  excess  of  what  is  customary  in 


1G4        TlIK    ItOKnKRLAND    OK    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

Other  armies,  but  he  has  to  j^repare  for  periodical 
examinations  upon  which  his  promotion  depends. 
This,  perhaps,  explains  why  in  society  the  Ger- 
man officer  is  found  to  know  usually  one  or  more 
langua;4es  besides  his  own.  Last  month  I  met  at 
dinner  a  German  of^cer  of  the  artillery  who  was 
not  even  on  the  Great  General  Staff,  and  discov- 
ered by  accident  that  he  understood  and  used 
six  foreign  languages,  namely,  Russian,  Polish, 
English,  French,  Scandinavian,  and  Italian.  He 
was  a  man  of  means,  yet  constantly  working  at 
some  new  subject  for  the  mere  love  of  improve- 
ment. 

The  swagger  of  the  officer  on  the  street,  which 
strikes  the  travelling  Anglo-Saxon,  can  be  com- 
pared to  that  of  the  university  student,  who  puts 
upon  his  head  a  little  cap  about  the  size  of  a  sau- 
cer, and  parades  the  street  in  a  costume  intended 
to  arrest  the  attention  of  others  by  its  ridiculous- 
ness. The  very  young  officer  is  apt  to  swagger 
because  of  the  novelty  he  enjoys  in  wearing  a 
uniform  for  the  first  time,  but  this  swagger  is 
rarely  maintained  excepting  amongst  cavalry  offi- 
cers, who  are  mostly  recruited  from  the  wealthier 
aristocracy,  and  are  not  presumed  to  bring  with 
them  as  much  intellectual  weight  as  the  rest  of 
the  army.  The  German  school-boy  is  kept  in  a 
species  of  slavery  from  the  time  he  is  seven  years 
of  age  to  the  moment  when  he  either  goes  to  the 
university  or  becomes  an  officer.     During  these 


SIDE    MGHTS    ON     FHE    GERMAN    SOLDIER  1 67 

years  of  hard  mental  trainiiii^"  he  is  almost  entire- 
ly deprived  of  any  opportunity  to  develop  him- 
self either  in  the  field  of  sports  or  in  society. 
The  transition,  therefore,  is  most  violent  when, 
from  the  nursery  as  it  were,  he  is  suddenly  placed 
upon  the  highest  level  of  social  consideration  b)- 
investing  himself  with  epaulets.  That  he  should 
not  make  a  fool  of  himself  on  many  occasions  is 
unreasonable  to  expect,  anc^  it  is  only  a  source 
of  wonder  that  he  so  soon  conquers  the  natural 
tendency  of  an  inexperienced  man. 

In  the  autumn  of  every  year,  when  the  bulk  of 
the  crops  has  been  harvested,  so  that  troops  may 
march  across  country  without  doing  very  much 
damage  to  crops,  the  whole  of  the  German  army, 
including  a  large  proportion  of  reserves  who  are 
called  in  for  special  training,  may  be  said  to  ap- 
pear in  the  field  on  a  war  footing.  Instead  of 
sending  a  regiment  or  so  to  spend  a  few  weeks 
sheltered  by  canvas,  the  whole  country  becomes 
alive  with  marching  companies  and  regiments, 
marching  sometimes  hundreds  of  miles  to  meet 
an  imaginary  enemy,  as  though  war  had  been  de- 
clared. During  these  marches  they  skirmish  with 
detachments  sent  to  meet  them  ;  they  have  to 
guard  against  attack  by  night  as  well  as  by  day ; 
they  have  to  provide  for  forage  and  food  as 
though  in  actual  war;  they  (quarter  themselves 
as  best  they  can  in  villages,  and  often  sleep  out 
in  the  open  with  no  protection  over  their  heads, 


iGS         THE    nORDKRI-AXr)    OF    CZAR    ANI>    KAISKR 

and  none  beneath  them  unless  tliey  can  find 
some  straw  to  he  upon.  Tlie  annual  mobiliza- 
tion of  troops  all  over  the  country,  amounting 
to  about  half  a  million  of  men,  is  a  serious 
source  of  expense,  which  is,  however,  cheerfully 
borne,  because  it  is  recognized  to  be  the  only 
means  of  teaching  a  soldier  his  duty  in  the  pres- 
ence of  an  enem}'.  So  far  as  I  know,  the  only 
work  done  in  our  army  that  correspionds  in  any 
degree  to  that  in  the  German  is  that  represented 
by  the  long  marches  which  General  Miles  ini- 
tiated in  our  Southwestern  country  amongst  our 
cavalry,  sending  them  hundreds  of  miles  through 
the  wilderness,  liable  not  only  to  capture  by  the 
ri\al  columns  of  United  States  troops,  but  also 
to  actual  destruction  by  Apaches.  Any  one  who 
has  seen  the  thoroughly  business-like  way  in 
which  our  cavalry  does  its  duty  as  compared 
with  the  methods  of  such  of  our  troops  as  are 
quartered  in  or  about  large  towns,  without  any 
corresponding  training,  will  quickly  appreciate 
the  distinction  between  the  real  soldier  and  the 
make-believe  one.  Each  year  in  Germany,  over 
and  above  the  infinite  number  of  small  field 
operations,  there  is  one  on  a  larger  scale,  com- 
monly referred  to  as  the  grand  manoeuvres, 
which  takes  place  when  all  the  scattered  garri- 
sons representing  one  army  corps  unite  in  order 
of  battle  against  another  army  corps  gathered 
together  in  the  same  way.     From  the  time  of  a 


^^>''' 


AN    OKKKKH    111-    AIMII  I.I  I;N 


SIDE    LIGHTS    ON    THE    GERMAN    SOLDIER  171 

coinpany's  leaving  its  garrison  to  the  time  when 
it  becomes  part  of  an  army  corps  the  distance 
marched  may  be  two  or  three  hundred  miles, 
and  the  time  occupied  two  or  three  months,  ac- 
cording to  circumstances.  These  grand  manoeu- 
vres are  always  attended  by  the  emperor  in  per- 
son, who  commands  now  on  one  side  and  now 
on  the  other,  testing  the  efficiency  of  every 
branch  of  his  service  as  thoroughly  as  is  possible 
without  the  use  of  ball-cartridge.  When  one 
bears  in  mind  that  a  single  army  corps  marching 
along  a  single  road  occupies  for  its  30,000  men 
between  thirty  and  forty  miles,  it  is  easy  to  see 
how  much  complication  can  be  produced  by  at- 
tempting to  bring  those  men  rapidly  to  the 
front  in  line  of  battle,  extending,  perhaps,  ten 
miles  between  the  extremities  of  the  two  wings. 
Then,  too,  there  are  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
bringing  up  to  each  company  or  battalion  the 
ammunition  and  food  supplies,  quartering  the 
men,  providing  them  with  water,  and  keeping 
them  fit  for  the  next  day's  hard  work.  These 
problems  never  enter  into  the  manoeuvres  under- 
taken at  Peckskill  or  Aldershot,  where  the  men 
return  to  the  same  quarters  every  night.  The 
German  officer  knows  that  aside  from  his  profes- 
sional knowledge  as  tested  by  paper  examina- 
tions, his  promotion  and  general  career  as  an 
officer  will  be  largely  modified  by  the  work 
which  he   does  during  the  autumn  manoeuvres. 


172        nil-    r.()i<i>i-.Rr,A\P  of  czar  and   kaisf.r 

\\c  may  know  liis  theoretical  strategy  by  heart, 
l)iit  if  he  phmts  his  battery  too  far  one  way  or 
the  other,  if  he  neglects  to  seize  the  right  posi- 
tion, if  he  leads  his  cavalry  into  a  swamp,  if  he 
brings  his  men  under  a  fire  where  they  may  pre- 
sumably expect  annihilation,  if  he  does  a  hun- 
dred things  which  in  real  war  would  be  fatal,  and 
against  which  no  text-bot)ks  can  protect  him,  he 
is  immediately  the  object  of  severe  criticism  by 
the  commander-in-chief.  The  field  is  studded 
with  experienced  of^cers  who  act  solely  as  um- 
pires, riding  from  one  detachment  to  the  other, 
and  making  minute  notes  of  everything  w'hich 
they  see.  The  great  war  game  is  played  under 
certain  rules  which  military  experience  has 
shown  to  be  well  devised,  based  upon  experi- 
ence in  actual  war,  and  when  these  rules  are  vio- 
lated the  officer  may  expect  to  suffer  in  conse- 
quence. The  troops  taking  part  in  these  ma- 
nctiuvres  have  no  previous  knowledge  of  the 
country  over  which  they  are  to  operate,  and 
therefore  their  officers  have  to  become  as  prac- 
tised in  the  use  of  map  and  compass  as  a  sailor 
at  sea.  They  are  told  simply  that  between  two 
points  several  hundreds  of  miles  apart  a  battle 
may  be  reasonably  expected — much  as  though  ^ 
column  of  our  troops  were  ordered  to  march 
from  New  York  to  Pittsburg  on  a  certain  day, 
having  only  the  information  that  within  a  hun- 
dred  miles  of  the  latter  place  resistance  might 


SIDE    LIGHTS    ON    THE    GERMAN    SOLDIER  1 75 

be  expected  from  a  certain  force.  Of  course  in 
Germany  the  very  best  maps  are  at  the  service  of 
the  officers — maps  on  the  scale  of  about  one  mile 
to  the  inch.  These  maps  are  made  by  the  govern- 
ment, and  sold  at  a  very  small  price.  During  the 
grand  manoeuvres  it  is  the  custom  of  the  com- 
mander-in-chief, after  the  day's  work  is  conclud- 
ed, to  sound  the  bugle-call  that  assembles  all  the 
officers  about  him — at  least  as  many  as  can  come  ; 
he  then  delivers  what  is  called  the  critique,  a 
general  critical  summary  of  the  day's  w^ork.  The 
present  emperor  is  particularly  noted  for  the 
thoroughness  with  which  he  conducts  his  cri- 
tiques ;  his  memory  is  extraordinary,  his  knowl- 
edge of  soldiers'  detail  work  equally  so,  and  he 
has  besides  the  physical  energy  that  enables  him 
to  overlook  nearly  every  part  of  the  great  battle- 
field. This  is  an  advantage  which  makes  his  crit- 
ical discussions  much  more  dreaded  even  than 
those  of  his  grandfather,  who  in  his  latter  years 
was  naturally  unable  to  attend  manoeuvres  more 
than  in  a  somewhat  perfunctory  manner. 

For  the  officers  and  men  in  general  the  manccu- 
vres  afford  little  amusement.  They  have  to  be 
up  long  before  the  sun,  their  work  all  day  is  of 
the  hardest  kind,  they  are  quartered  in  stables 
and  peasants'  houses  almost  as  comfortless  as 
the  bare  ground,  and  if  they  have  any  hours  of 
leisure  they  are  not  where  they  could  possibly 
enjoy  any  social  relaxation,  but  in  fact  the  care 


176 


IHE    IIOKDLKI.ANU    UK    CZAR    AND    KAISER 


AN   OFFICER    OF    DRAGOONS    IN    TIIK    MEl.I) 


of  their  men  must  nec- 
essarily occupy  all  their 
time,  to  say  nothing 
of  preparations  for  the 
morrow. 

It    is   a    little   better 
for  those  who    are   im- 
mediately in    the   suite 
of  the    emperor,  either 
as  guests  or  as  officers 
commanded    to   head- 
c[uarters,    as,    for     in- 
stance, the  inspectors  of 
different  departments, 
the    umpires,    and  high 
officers    of  other   army 
corps.     These  have  no 
great  responsibilities  af- 
ter   the    day's    fighting 
closes,  and  at  once    re- 
turn to  the  headquarters 
in     some    town,   where 
they  arc  properly  lodged 
and    fed.     The   emper- 
or usually 
gi  ve  s    a 
dinner  ev- 
ery   even- 
-    ing  to  the 
principal 


•'■jpT'TSi^-^jwsr^ 


SIDE    LIGHTS    ON    THE    GERMAN    SOLDIER  179 

officers  and  officials  in  the  neighborhood,  as 
well  as  to  the  principal  citizens  residing  near 
by.  He  seizes  the  opportunity  of  the  grand 
manoeuvres  to  make  the  acquaintance  person- 
ally of  the  principal  people  in  the  different 
sections  of  his  country,  and  combines  politics 
with  war  in  an  efficient  way.  The  social  feat- 
ures of  the  grand  manceuvres  do  very  much  to 
bring  notable  people  of  different  parts  of  the 
country  together,  and  thus  little  by  little  to  ef- 
face the  jealousies  which  naturally  exist  among 
citizens  of  the  different  states  who  have  only 
been  united  since  the  Franco-German  war.  The 
year  1892  was  the  first  in  the  reign  of  the  pres- 
ent emperor  that  had  no  imperial  or  grand  ma- 
noeuvres, for  the  obvious  reason  that  cholera  was 
present  in  many  German  towns,  and  particularly 
in  France  close  to  the  German  border.  They 
will  probably,  however,  take  place  this  year — 
1893  —  as  usual,  and  in  the  neighborhood  of 
where  they  should  have  been  last  year,  namely, 
about  Metz.  It  is  much  to  be  hoped  that  they 
will  be  carried  out  so  as  to  bring  the  people  of 
this  province  into  contact  with  the  emperor  antl 
his  surroundings.  The  result  cannot  fail  to  at 
least  modify  those  feelings  of  antipathy  which 
people  of  the  lately  French  provinces  are  still 
said  to  entertain  for  their  German  conqueror. 
The  French  press  persists  in  nurturing  the  idea 
that  Germans  are  more  or  less  coarse  and  cruel 


l8o         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

masters,  and  that  Alsace  and  Lorraine  cannot 
long  remain  separated  from  the  land  of  Napo- 
leon. Nothing  will  do  more  to  alter  any  such 
feeling  than  to  come  into  personal  relations  with 
the  chief  of  the  German  nation,  and  to  see  the 
manner  in  which  he  handles  troops.  He  com- 
mands with  a  skill  that  does  not  encourage  the 
idea  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine  changing  hands  dur- 
ing his  lifetime  at  least. 

The  German  officer  does  remarkably  little  in 
the  way  of  athletics  or  sport  of  any  kind  ;  the 
main  reasons  are  that  he  is  short  both  of  time 
and  of  money,  particularly  of  time.  The  train- 
ing to  the  eye  and  the  judgment  which  comes 
from  cross'-country  riding  over  hedges  and  ditch- 
es in  pursuit  of  a  fox  or  a  deer  would  be  a  very 
valuable  addition  to  the  accomplishments  of  the 
German  officer  of  to-day.  Among  the  crack 
cavalry  regiments  there  is  considerable  steeple- 
chasing,  but,  on  account  of  the  expense,  it  is 
limited  to  those  who  have  large  means.  It  is  a 
rare  thing  for  an  officer  to  take  part  in  rowing, 
sailing,  bicycling,  football,  cricket,  tennis,  base- 
ball, golf,  or  any  of  the  games  which  do  so  much 
to  render  a  man  master  of  his  muscles.  The 
present  emperor  has  done  very  much  to  make 
sport  popular  and  fashionable.  He  realizes  fully 
the  advantages  which  a  man  brought  up  to  ath- 
letic games  has  over  one  who  has  only  the  train- 
ing of  the  professional  soldier,  but  I  fear  it  will 


SIDE    LIGHTS    ON    THE    GERMAN    SOLDIER         .1S3 

take  a  generation  educated  differently  from  the 
present  to  bring  about  a  reform  so  much  to  be 
desired.  The  evil  commences  during  the  school 
years. 

The  German  boy,  up  to  his  eighteenth  or 
nineteenth  year,  when  he  leaves  school,  is  looked 
upon  merely  as  a  machine  for  grinding  out  Latin, 
Greek,  and  mathematics.  If  he  has  in  each  week 
two  or  three  hours  devoted  to  gymnastic  exer- 
cises, he  considers  himself  fortunate.  It  never 
enters  his  head  that  he  should  spend  at  least 
three  hours  a  day  in  out -door  games  of  some 
kind.  His  teachers  hold  up  their  hands  in  hor- 
ror at  the  idea  of  devoting  as  much  attention  to 
the  physical  culture  of  their  pupils  as  to  the 
cramming  of  their  minds  with  dead  knowledge. 
Even  my  excellent  German  tutor  who  fitted  me 
for  Yale,  and  who  was  himself  a  teacher  of  gym- 
nastics, regarded  it  as  monstrous  that  boys  should 
spend  two  or  three  hours  a  day  in  playing  foot- 
ball or  rowing.  The  whole  professorial  caste  of 
Germany,  loyal  as  it  is  to  the  Hohenzollerns,  re- 
gards this  emperor  with  ill -disguised  suspicion 
because  of  his  desire  that  the  German  school- 
boy should  be  a  typically  vigorous  creature  as 
well  as  an  educated  one.  The  drudgery  of  the 
school-boy's  life  can  scarcely  be  credited  by  one 
who  has.  not  lived  it,  and  it  is  only  because  the 
emperor  has  suffered  under  it  that  he  is  now  so 
strong  an  advocate  for  improvement. 


184         THE    BORnEKLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

The  injury  to  health,  wliich  is  the  direct  re- 
sult of  the  unnatural  life  led  by  the  German  boy, 
has  become  strangely  apparent  in  late  years, 
through  published  statistics  ;  but  even  without 
them  the  evils  manifest  themselves  to  impartial 
eyes  in  the  difficulty  of  getting  men  of  proper 
build  to  fill  the  ranks  of  the  officers'  corps.  If 
the  War  Department  accomplishes  nothing  more 
than  to  bring  pressure  upon  the  academic  bodies 
in  this  one  direction,  it  will  have  justified  its  ex- 
istence;  and  if  the  present  emperor  should  die 
having  done  nothing  greater  than  to  leave  every 
school-child  Jhe  right  to  physical  development 
as  well  as  mental,  he  will  have  earned  the  grati- 
tude of  every  mother  and  school -child  in  the 
fatherland.  Already  football  clubs,  rowing  clubs, 
sailing  clubs,  are  in  existence,  and  are  destined 
to  increase  in  number  and  importance.  Germany 
has  made  enormous  strides  in  the  last  ten  years 
in  the  field  of  sport,  and  shows  no  signs  of  going 
backwards.  German  oarsmen  and  bicyclists  are 
making  excellent  records ;  they  take  to  sport 
naturally  wherever  they  are  afforded  the  oppor- 
tunities, and  as  soon  as  the  school-boy  is  allowed 
his  afternoons  free  for  out-door  exercise,  there  is 
no  reason  to  doubt  that  the  German  fields  will 
be  studded  with  active  lads  hard  at  their  games, 
exactly  as  in  every  Anglo-Saxon  community  to- 
day;  nor  is  there  any  reason  to  suppose  that  in 
consequence    of    this    liberty    the    German    will 


SIDE    LIGHTS    ON    THE    GERMAN    SOLDIER 


'8S 


prove  less  able  to  de- 
fend his  country,  or 
hold  his  own  as  a 
manufacturer  or  mer- 
chant or  professional 
man  in  competition 
with  those  of  other 
countries. 

When  the  school- 
boy becomes  the  stu- 
dent or  the  officer, 
he  immediately  prac- 
tises fencing  very  as- 
siduously to  defend 
what  he  is  pleased  to 
call  his  honor,  and  he 
is  very  apt  to  con- 
clude that  only  an 
officer  or  a  student  is 
possessed  of  such  an 
ornament.  This  ex- 
ercise of  swordsman- 
ship is  very  good  as 
far  as  it  goes ;  but, 
judging  by  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  stu- 
dents who  indulge 
most  in  this  manly 
exercise,  beer -drink- 
ing forms  so  large  a 


A    nUAGOON    TKUMI'ETER 


9i^'0 


l86  IHK    i;oRDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

share  of  the  work  done  as  to  ahnost  neutral- 
ize the  benefits  claimed  for  it.  The  fencing 
takes  place  mostl)'  in  rooms  dense  with  tobac- 
co smoke,  dust,  and  human  exhalation,  and  does 
not  compare  for  physical  benefit  to  a  game  of 
baseball  or  football.  It  would  assist  very  much 
in  dissipating  a  great  deal  of  nonsense  in  Ger- 
many if  students  at  the  universities  could  meas- 
ure their  prowess  by  competing  for  prizes  in  out- 
door sports  where  previous  training  of  a  severe 
kind  has  to  be  undergone. 

The  influence  of  the  German  officer  upon  Ger- 
man life  and  sport  is  so  great  that  we  can  hardly 
imagine  sport  to  become  thoroughly  popular  in 
the  fatherland  until  clubs  are  formed  among  the 
officers,  and  thus  made  fashionable.  The  begin- 
ning to  this  better  state  of  things  has  been  made 
by  the  emperor,  who  is  not  only  a  good  yachts- 
man, oarsman,  huntsman,  tennis-player,  but  even 
threatens  to  sail  a  canoe.  When  his  views  in  re- 
gard to  the  physical  education  of  men  and  boys 
become  general  among  his  subjects,  we  may  look 
for  a  development  of  the  German  officer  that  shall 
bring  him  to  a  considerably  higher  level  than  even 
at  present. 

In  theory  the  German  soldier  has  substantially 
the  same  legal  guarantees  in  regard  to  his  rights 
and  personal  liberty  as  the  private  of  the  United 
States  regular  army  or  of  England.  Any  officer 
is  liable  to  court-martial  if  he  addresses  his  supe- 


m 


^^^^'^^m^& 


riilUASSIER    ON    STAFF    DUTY 


SIDE    LIGHTS    ON    THE    GERMAN    SOLDIER  1 89 

rior  officer  in  language  that  is  unprofessional,  ex- 
actly as  it  is  with  us.  Practically,  however,  the 
German  officer  often  reprimands  his  stupid  sub- 
ordinate by  a  cuff  on  the  ears,  which  the  victim 
receives  with  equanimity.  In  fact,  he  would  rath- 
er have  the  cuff  and  have  done  with  it  in  a  few 
minutes,  than  be  tried  in  a  more  legal  form  and 
punished  by  arrest  for  days,  perhaps  weeks.  Ger- 
mans are  irritable,  as  all  people  of  great  brain  ac- 
tivity are,  and  in  a  moment  of  excitement  use 
language  that  is  unparliamentary  and  administer 
a  box  on  the  ears  with  striking  rapidity.  The 
laws  governing  the  army  are  very  strict  in  en- 
forcing the  proper  treatment  of  the  soldier  by  his 
superior,  particular  stress  being  laid  on  the  neces- 
sity of  maintaining  the  self-respect  of  the  sol- 
dier. * 

Whoever  takes  the  trouble  to  attend  the  ma- 
noeuvres of  French  or  Russian  army  corps  must 
be  surprised  by  the  many  precautions  taken  to 
prevent  their  seeing  anything.  In  Germany,  on 
the  contrary,  I  am  able  to  say,  froin  having  at- 
tended all  the  grand  manoeuvres  during  the  pres- 
ent reign,  that  no  one  bothers  his  head  about 
who  may  or  may  not  be  among  the  spectators. 
There  are,  of  course,  a  number  of  field  gendarmes, 
who  arc  detailed  to  protect  the  spectators  from 
sudden  charges  of  cavalry,  and  to  keep  order ; 
but  it  never  enters  their  head  that  they  arc  to 
arrest  a   Frenchman   or   a    Russian,  whether   lie 


/    -1 


\  y^j^Mj 


\ 


lif\ 


m 


V 


T^ 


4  A: 


192  THE    P.ORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

be  a  spy  or  not.  Whenever  the  German  troops 
operate  near  the  frontier,  it  is  well  known  that 
man}-  of  the  French  officers  swell  the  crowd  of 
spectators;  ever)-  one  knows  that  they  are  French 
officers  dressed  up  as  civilians;  in  fact,  the  stor\- 
is  told  of  a  humorous  gendarme  who  was  clearing 
the  road,  and  addressed  the  crowd  in  front  of 
him  as  follows:  "Gentlemen  and  Messieurs  the 
French  officers  will  please  move  on."  The  ex- 
planation of  this  apparent  indifference  on  the 
part  of  German  war  authorities  in  regard  to  be- 
ing scrutinized  by  their  enemies  lies  in  the  fact 
that  they  know  pretty  well  everything  that  their 
enemies  know  in  regard  to  their  neighbors,  and 
they  are  equally  confident  that  their  enemies  are 
pretty  well  informed  about  German  affairs.  If  it 
should  come  to  a  war,  they  are  willing  to  depend 
upon  the  superiority  of  their  organization,  and, 
above  all,  on  the  superiorit)-  of  the  material  com- 
posing their  army,  both  officers  and  men.  partic- 
ularly the  officers. 


MOUNTED     HUSSAR 


EMPEROR   WILLIAM'S    STUD- FARM    AND 
HUNTING   FOREST 

\.  ^HEN  Remington  and  I  crossed  into 
'  Y  Germany  we  determined  to  make 
an  excursion  into  the  very  eastern- 
most corner  of  the  Prussian  monarchy,  where 
the  father  of  Frederick  the  Great  established 
a  great  horse-breeding  estabhshment  near  a  ht- 
tle  village  called  Trakehncn.  This  famous  stud- 
farm  is   still    carried   on    with   characteristic    en- 


ergy, and  not  only  provides  the  German  army 
with  the  hundred  thousand  horses  which  it  re- 
quires in  time  of  peace,  but  docs  an  enormous 
amount  towards  keeping  up  in  the  country 
a  high  standard  of  horse  for  general  pur- 
poses. Trakehnen  is  only  about  ten  miles  from 
the  Russian  frontier,  and  has  three  times  been 


196         THE    nORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

exposed  to  capture  by  invasion  from  over  the 
border ;  but  each  time  the  authorities  have  been 
able  to  escape  with  all  the  animals  there,  a  feat 
which  appears  almost  miraculous  considering  the 
flat  and  open  character  of  the  country.  I  had 
with  me  a  letter  of  introduction  to  the  com- 
mandant or  governor  of  this  estate,  Major  von 
I'rankenberg-Proschlitz.  We  alighted  one  beau- 
tiful day  in  July  at  the  little  station  of  Trakeh- 
nen.  It  was  the  only  house  in  sight,  the  village 
was  four  miles  away,  but  the  major  had  kindly 
sent  an  open  carriage  to  meet  us.  The  drive  to 
the  major's  house  was  along  beautiful  avenues 
shaded  by  oak-trees  almost  the  whole  way.  When 
we  halted  at  the  front  door,  our  host  received  us 
with  every  manifestation  of  good-will,  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  on  the  morrow  he  was  anticipating 
an  official  inspection  at  the  hands  of  no  less  im- 
pressive dignitaries  than  the  minister  of  war  and 
his  colleague  of  the  Agricultural  Department. 
A  Prussian  inspection  is  a  matter  of  tremendous 
importance,  and  that  Major  von  Frankenberg 
under  such  circumstances  should  appear  com- 
fortable, even  genial,  speaks  volumes  for  the 
self-reliance  and  sweetness  of  that  gentleman's 
nature. 

Nothing  more  pretty  can  be  conceived  than 
the  appearance  of  the  major's  quarters  as  we 
drove  up  through  the  vista  of  trees.  It  was 
large,  commodious,  covered  with  vines,  fragrant 


Emperor  william  s  stud-farm  and  forest    199 

with  the  odor  of  flowers  that  grew  about  and  be- 
fore the  door.  A  shady  lawn  stretched  in  the 
rear  with  flower  beds  on  its  edges,  and  close  by 
was  a  delightful  arbor  where  coffee  was  served 
in  the  afternoon  during  the  warm  season.  Within 
a  few  minutes  the  family  of  this  Prussian  of^- 
cer  made  us  feel  that  we  had  once  more  fallen 
amongst  good  friends.  The  kind  major  quickly 
divined  the  interest  which  we  felt  in  the  great 
horse-breeding  establishment  which  he  controlled, 
and  as  soon  as  luncheon  was  disposed  of  lost  no 
time  in  driving  us  about  from  point  to  point, 
chatting  with  us  in  regard  to  what  we  saw,  and 
answering  our  questions  with  frankness. 

To  begin  with,  Trakehnen  is  situated  in  the 
most  favored  province  of  Germany  for  horse- 
breeding  purposes,  although,  geographically  con- 
sidered, it  appears  to  be  the  most  unpropitious. 
Nearly  every  farm  in  East  Prussia  is  devoted  to 
this  one  occupation,  and  the  German  army  gets 
many  more  horses  from  this  little  corner  than 
any  other  province  or  kingdom  of  the  empire. 
The  war  authorities  arc,  in  respect  to  this  branch 
of  the  government,  very  liberal,  for  it  affects  the 
army  directly  as  well  as  it  does  the  country  in- 
directly. The  very  best  thoroughbreds  that  can 
be  bought  for  money  arc  brought  here,  and  from 
them  are  bred  a  secondary  class  of  horses  which 
the  Germans  call  "  halbblut,"  a  word  which  can- 
not be  safely  translated  as  half-breed,  but  is  more 


200         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

nearly  rendered  by  the  French  "  pres  du  sang." 
I'A'cry  year  some  of  the  best  names  on  the  Eng- 
Hsh  turf  disappear  in  favor  of  the  breeding-farms 
for  the  German  cavahy.  The  stalHons  chosen 
are  such  as  have  good  records  on  the  race-track, 
and,  in  addition,  the  pecuHar  quaHties  of  form 
and  structure  which  the  German  ofificer  consid- 
ers essential  to  the  ideal  cavalry  horse  —  that  is 
to  say,  one  in  whom  speed  and  weight -carrying 
capacity  unite  to  the  highest  possible  degree. 
All  told,  Trakehnen  has  about  a  thousand  head 
of  every  age,  but  of  only  one  general  class.  It 
has  been  by  strict  adherence  to  the  principle  of 
selection  above  mentioned  that  the  TrakcJincr  or 
Prussian  horse  has  reached  its  present  definite 
position  and  high  level  of  power.  Remington's 
drawings  will  give  a  better  notion  of  the  ideal 
which  the  Prussian  military  authorities  entertain 
on  the  subject  of  this  horse  than  any  lengthy 
description  which  I  might  attempt.  Sufifice  it 
to  say  that  Germans  at  least  consider  themselves 
amply  compensated  for  the  cost  of  this  institu- 
tion during  the  two  centuries  of  its  existence. 

The  major  does  not  breed  for  the  race-track 
nor  for  the  plough  ;  he  has  in  view  the  heavy 
cavalry  cuirassier  horse,  or  the  requirements  of 
the  lighter  hussar,  and  Trakehnen  ma}-  be  con- 
sidered a  national  stud-farm,  in  so  far  as  the  horse 
required  for  the  cavalry  is  one  that  is  useful  for 
other  purposes  as  well. 


MASSAGE   OF   A    COLT  S    KNEES 


We  pulled  up  in  a  field  in  which  were  a  hun- 
dred three-year-old  stallions  running  free  and 
watched  by  two  herders,  each  bearing  a  long 
whip,  which  he  cracked  now  and  then  as  a  warn- 
ing that  some  one  of  the  herd  was  straying. 
The  herders  had  no  saddles  or  stirrups,  sat  sim- 
ply upon  a  blanket  strapped  to  the  horse's  back, 
and  were  dressed  in  the  livery  of  the  estate,  which 
is  not  dissimilar  to  the  grooms'  livery  of  the 
royal  family.     Any  one  familiar  with  three-year- 


202         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

old  stallions  in  English  or  American  stables 
might  easily  expect  that  a  herd  of  one  hundred 
would  be  disposed  to  resent  the  intrusion  of  a 
couple  of  strangers  in  their  midst,  especially  re- 
membering that  these  colts  were  of  thorough-bred 
parents,  at  least  on  one  side,  and  of  fair  blood  on 
the  other.  We  naturally  remarked  that  the  herd 
appeared  very  quiet,  and  paid  little  attention  to 
our  carriage  as  it  drove  up  close  to  them  on  the 
grass.  The  major  wished  us,  however,  to  under- 
stand that  they  were  as  gentle  as  sheep  and  not 
half  as  shy,  and,  in  order  to  make  a  practical  test 
of  this,  I  jumped  from  my  seat  and  walked  up 
to  the  herd,  into  the  very  midst  of  them,  stroll- 
ing in  and  out  amongst  them,  patting  them  on 
the  nose  or  on  the  flank,  wherever  I  happened 
to  be  nearest  them.  Amongst  German  cavalry 
horses  I  had  often  experienced  an  extraordinary 
amount  of  docility,  which  comes  naturally  as  the 
result  of  intelligent  handling  on  the  part  of  the 
grooms,  and  was  therefore  more  or  less  prepared 
to  risk  the  heels  and  the  teeth  of  those  into 
whose  midst  Major  von  Frankenberg  requested 
me  to  wander. 

If  this  docility  sprang  from  sleepiness  or 
coarseness  of  blood,  there  would  be  little  worth 
noting,  but  in  the  case  of  animals  of  most  un- 
questioned pluck  and  power  the  experience  is 
certainly  unique. 

"How  do  you  accomplish  this  result?"  we  asked. 


A    "TRAKEHNKr"    IIOUSK-WRANGI.ER 


EMPEROR  WILLIAM  S    STUD-FARM    AND    FOREST     205 

"  We  offer  a  prize,"  answered  the  major,  "  to 
those  whose  horses  show  the  most  confiding  dis- 
position at  the  approach  of  man.  Whenever  I 
enter  the  large  spaces  under  roof  where  they  are 
gathered  for  the  night,  if  I  discover  the  least  shy- 
ness or  unfriendliness  on  the  part  of  the  colts,  it 
is  a  sign  that  the  herdsmen  have  acted  contrary 
to  their  duty." 

Every  spring,  usually  about  May,  the  four-year- 
olds  are  distributed  amongst  the  auxiliary  or  sec- 
ondary stud-farms  of  Prussia,  likewise  for  breed- 
ing purposes,  so  that  with  the  exception  of  the 
stallions  and  brood-marcs  all  the  good  blood  here 
is  disposed  of  when  it  is  four  years  old.  There 
is  a  very  formidable  committee  that  determines 
what  horses  are  to  be  reserved  for  military  breed- 
ing purposes  at  the  other  stations  and  what  shall 
be  sold  at  auction,  an  event  which  draws  to  Tra- 
kehnen  buyers  from  every  country  of  the  globe, 
anxious  to  secure  specimens  of  this  excellent 
breed  of  horse.  It  is  from  this  estate  that  the 
emperor  draws  the  horses  which  he  uses  for  pri- 
vate purposes  in  his  carriages  and  for  the  saddle. 

By  a  special  arrangement,  made  in  1848,  the 
Prussian  crown  made  these  estates  a  present  to 
the  government,  on  condition  that  each  year  the 
king  should  be  allowed  to  select  thirty  horses 
for  private  use,  and  naturally  those  selected  are 
apt  to  be  the  best.  A  beautiful  little  saddle- 
horse  was  being  trained  for  the  emperor's  eldest 


2o6         THE    HORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

son  during  our  vn'sit,  as  well-built  an  animal  as 
one  could  wish,  and  as  gentle  as  a  baby.  The 
royal  stables  of  Prussia  are  filled  almost  exclu- 
siv^ely  with  black  horses  for  driving  purposes,  al- 
though for  riding  the  emperor  does  not  confine 
himself  to  any  particular  color.  In  addition  to 
the  breeding  animals  which  are  sent  from  here 
to  the  various  stud-farms  of  the  government  in 
other  parts  of  Prussia,  the  government  is  very 
wise  and  generous  in  encouraging  horse-breeding 
in  the  neighborhood  by  every  possible  means. 
The  farmers  are  permitted  the  use  of  government 
stallions  of  excellent  pedigree  at  a  remarkably 
low  figure — $5  was,  I  believe,  the  current  price 
last  year. 

The  secret  of  Trakehnen's  fame  as  a  horse- 
breeding  place,  according  to  our  host,  is  the  fact 
that  it  is  irrigated  in  every  direction  in  such  a 
manner  that  the  grass  is  rich  and  sweet  to  an 
extraordinary  extent.  The  soil,  too,  is  most  fa- 
vorable— deep  and  spongy.  When  it  was  origi- 
nally selected  for  this  purpose  it  was  nothing 
better  than  a  vast  swamp  over  which  the  moose 
roamed  wild,  as  he  still  roams  in  a  circumscribed 
section  of  the  Baltic  shores  near  the  mouth  of 
the  Memel  River.  The  father  of  Frederick  the 
Great  was  a  capital  farmer,  and  had  a  good  eye 
for  horses  as  well.  He  converted  this  swamp 
into  the  richest  pasture-land  of  Germany,  where 
even   to-day  one  cannot  dig  two   feet  without 


liKINGINO    (JUT    A    SlAI.I.ION 


EMPEROR    WILLIAM  S    STUD-FARM    AND    FOREST     209 

striking  water.  In  winter  the  meadows  are 
flooded,  and  only  the  most  careful  irrigation 
preserves  them  in  good  condition  for  the  balance 
of  the  year.  There  are  no  fences  anywhere  upon 
the  estate,  which  stretches  about  nine  miles  in 
one  direction  and  three  or  four  in  the  other,  and 
were  the  horses  less  docile  than  they  are,  it 
would  seem  an  easy  thing  for  them  to  get  lost 
many  times  in  the  year. 

Major  von  Frankenberg  has  an  enormous  ad- 
miration for  this  particular  horse,  and  as  he  goes 
to  England  every  year  for  the  purpose  of  select- 
ing thorough-breds,  and  has  visited  the  stud- 
farms  of  nearly  every  country  in  the  world,  it  is 
fair  to  conclude  that  his  feelings  are  not  the  re- 
sult of  bias. 

"  But,"  said  he,  "  I  insist  on  one  indispensable 
condition — our  horse  must  not  be  used  until  he 
is  six  years  old.  He  must  be  allowed  to  get  his 
growth  and  seasoning  before  using.  We  made  a 
great  mistake  in  1870  in  permitting  many  young 
horses,  as  young  as  four  years  of  age,  to  come 
into  the  army.  They  nearly  all  broke  down, 
and  in  the  long-run  were  a  source  of  great  loss 
to  us — far  beyond  their  cost.  With  proper  food 
and  treatment,  however,  I  will  back  him  against 
any  horse  I  know." 

The  major  gave  us  many  illustrations  of  what 
the  TrakcJuier  has  done  in  his  experience ;  not 
such  rides  as  Austrian  and  Gerinan  of^cers  per- 
■4 


2IO         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

formed  in  October  of  1892,  but  work  of  practical 
value.  For  instance,  in  the  campaign  against 
France  of  1870  and  1871,  he  led  his  regiment  of 
hussars  throughout  the  months  of  January,  Feb- 
ruary, and  March,  over  a  country  covered  with 
ice  and  snow,  at  the  rate  of  thirty-five  English 
miles  a  day. 

At  the  same  time  the  major  was  careful  to 
point  out  what  United  States  cavalry  olTficers  can 
appreciate  more  than  those  of  any  other  army, 
that  these  are  not  horses  that  can  be  turned  out 
to  take  care  of  themselves,  like  the  Indian's  mus- 
tang or  the  rough  Cossack  pony  of  the  steppes. 

All  the  young  horses  are  carefully  rubbed  clean 
and  inspected  every  day,  the  brush  and  curry- 
comb being  used  in  cleaning.  During  this  proc- 
ess the  young  colts  are  tied,  but  when  three  or 
four  years  old  they  stand  quietly  enough  and 
enjoy  it.  In  order  to  insure  docility  on  the  part 
of  these  animals  it  is  made  a  rule  that  each  day 
the  colts  are  to  be  stroked  with  the  hand,  their 
feet  raised  —  in  other  words,  treated  in  such  a 
way  as  to  make  them  familiar  with  their  future 
masters. 

It  would  seem  as  though  the  rich,  succulent 
grass  produced  by  the  pastures  would  be  enough 
food  for  these  young  animals,  but  the  major  said 
that  they  did  better  when  they  received  two  por- 
tions of  oats  a  day,  once  in  the  morning  and 
again  at  noon,  but  never  at  night. 


I 


Tin 

V  •  ^ 


EMPEROR    WILLIAMS    STUD-FARM    AND    FOREST     213 

One  evening  the  major  took  us  to  see  the 
horses  called  home  from  the  pasture.  They 
came  in  troops  of  hundreds,  and  gathered  in 
large  enclosures  facing  the  stables,  or  rather  the 
large  spaces  in  which  they  all  spent  the  night  in 
common,  in  groups  of  one  hundred  or  less.  These 
paddocks  were  formed  by  planting  railway  sleep- 
ers on  end  at  short  intervals,  connected  by  gas- 
pipes —  a  very  simple  and  economical  arrange- 
ment. Here  the  young  horses  are  exercised  in 
the  winter  when  it  would  be  unsuitable  to  let 
them  out  in  the  snow.  They  go  round  and 
round  in  a  ring  under  the  eye  of  the  groom. 

On  the  occasion  of  our  visit  I  noticed  that  the 
main  body  divided  itself  according  to  color — the 
blacks  going  to  one  corner,  the  browns  to  anoth- 
er, the  bays  to  a  third ;  of  whites  or  grays  I  saw 
no  specimens.  Here  and  there  would  be  one 
who  had  mistaken  his  corner,  or  was  seeking  for- 
bidden company  out  of  deviltry.  The  keeper 
had  no  difficulty  in  bringing  him  to  his  right 
senses,  however,  by  simply  calling  his  name  and 
waving  his  hand  in  the  direction  of  the  corner  to 
which  he  belonged.  The  colt  thus  addressed  in- 
variably leaped  out  from  the  corner  in  which  he 
was  an  intruder,  and  galloped  straight  to  the 
corner  whose  color  matched  his.  This  we  saw 
done  many  times  over,  and  it  never  failed,  .  .  . 

Neither  Remington  nor  I  had  intended  to  tax 
the  hospitality  of  our  kindly  host  more  than  a 


J  14  I  UK    r.ORDKRI.ANI)    OK    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

day,  but  \vc  were  gladly  persuaded  to  prolong 
our  stay,  which  gave  us  an  opportunity  to  visit 
the  vast  and  almost  primeval  forests  to  which 
the  Emperor  of  Germany  retires  in  order  to  hunt 
the  wild  deer  and  boar.  A  victoria  was  placed 
at  our  disposal  by  the  major,  and  in  this  luxuri- 
ous vehicle  we  sat  wiiile  a  pair  of  black  Tra- 
kehner  mares  carried  us  swiftly,  and  without  in- 
terruption, over  the  twenty  miles  of  country  road 
that  separated  us  from  the  hunting- lodge  of 
Rominten.  It  was  a  rolling  open  country  across 
which  we  drove,  until  we  came  upon  the  edges 
of  sombre  woods.  The  cultivation  was  on  all 
sides  of  a  high  grade,  and  in  striking  contrast 
to  what  prevails  across  the  border,  only  about 
five  or  ten  miles  distant.  There  were  few  vil- 
lages, but  their  inhabitants  were  clean  and  tidily 
dressed.  Had  it  not  been  a  day  of  sunshine, 
made  more  beautiful  by  the  effect  of  fleecy 
clouds  studding  here  and  there  the  blue  hcav- 
ens,  in  an  atmosphere  freshened  by  the  breeze 
following  a  day  of  rain,  with  a  road  under  us 
neither  dusty  nor  muddy,  although  towards  the 
latter  part  of  it  it  was  a  mere  cart-track  through 
a  somewhat  sandy  soil,  I  fear  that  we  might  have 
termed  our  twenty  miles  rather  desolate  travel- 
ling. We  saw  some  fine  specimens  of  the  em- 
peror's wild-boar  and  big  red  deer,  that  bounded 
into  the  thicket  as  we  approached,  for  these  ani- 
mals are  not  as  tame  as  those  in  English  parks, 


EMPEROR  William's  stud-farm  and  forest   217 

being  rarely  disturbed.  At  one  point  our  driver 
stopped  to  let  us  get  out  and  see  hovv^  near  we 
could  come  to  a  herd  that  appeared  to  be  about 
a  thousand  yards  off.  We  stalked  so  close  that 
Remington  decided  emphatically  that  he  would 
have  bagged  half  a  dozen  had  he  been  allowed 
to  try  his  hand  at  it.  As  it  was,  however,  he  did 
something  better  by  making  some  sketches  from 
behind  a  fallen  tree.  We  drove  a  long  distance, 
after  this,  amidst  magnificent  trees,  mostly  ever- 
greens, although  oak  and  poplar  appeared  here 
and  there.  The  forest,  which  includes  about 
fifty  square  miles,  is  watered  by  some  excellent 
streams,  stocked  with  a  variety  of  fish,  chief  of 
all  the  trout,  although  pike,  perch,  carp,  Scar- 
dinious  crythroplitJuxlinus,  Carassiiis  vulgaris,  and 
many  others  of  excellent  quality  are  also  abun- 
dant. Half  a  dozen  houses  compose  all  there  is 
of  the  village  here,  whose  inhabitants  are  princi- 
pally occupied  in  work  about  the  forest.  We 
passed  through  the  village,  over  a  bridge,  and  up 
a  hill,  on  the  top  of  which  stood  the  house  which 
the  emperor  is  building  as  his  hunting -lodge. 
The  dark  evergreen  forest  closes  it  in  at  the 
rear,  and  in  many  respects  it  suggests  a  summer 
residence  in  the  Adirondack  Mountains.  There 
were  several  officials  in  the  house  at  the  time, 
on  various  errands,  the  most  important  to  us 
being  the  forester.  We  asked  permission  to 
enter  and  take  a  look  at  the  rooms,  but  were 


2lS         IHK    liORDKRLANI)    t)K    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

politely  iiiLormcd,  with  apparent  rccijret,  that  this 
was  cotitran-  to  their  orders.  The  German  court 
was,  however,  at  Potsdam,  and,  as  there  was  a 
telegraph  office  near  by,  we  wired  to  the  capital 
asking  permission  of  the  emperor  to  visit  his 
place  here.  The  postmaster  and  chief  of  the 
telegraph  department  we  found  perched  on  the 
ridge-pole  of  his  thatched  roof  making  some  re- 
pairs. He  came  down  cheerfully  from  the  roof, 
sent  off  our  message  for  us,  and  acceded  to  our 
desire  that  he  should  harness  up  his  ponies  to  a 
farm  wagon  and  point  out  to  us  some  interest- 
ing features  of  the  wilderness.  We  had  a  rather 
bumpy  ride  of  it,  for  our  way  led  over  rocks  and 
stumps,  zigzagging  in  and  out  among  the  big 
trees  without  reference  to  any  road  or  path.  He 
was  a  pretty  old  man,  this  forester,  bent  by  rheu- 
matism  as  well  as  years,  but  withal  of  a  commu- 
nicative and  kindly  disposition.  As  the  emper- 
or's house  here  is  so  near  the  Russian  frontier, 
it  naturally  occurred  to  Remington  that  a  party 
of  enterprising  Muscovite  cowboys  could,  with- 
out difficult}',  on  some  moonlight  night,  jump 
this  ranch,  so  to  speak,  and  carr}-  off  the  emper- 
or a  hostage  to  St.  Petersburg,  without  any  more 
difficulty  than  cutting  the  telegraph  wires  lead- 
ing from  Rominten  to  the  main  line, some  twenty 
or  thirty  miles  away. 

The  old  forester  took  us  to  points  where  we 
had    glimpses  of   little    lakes    and    streams    and 


PEASANTS  NEAR  KOMINTEN 


EMPEROR    WILLIAMS    STUD- FARM    AND    FOREST     22  1 

patches  of  meadow,  surrounded  by  wilderness  as 
perfect  as  anything  in  Colorado,  and  amused  us 
until  it  was  time  to  think  of  our  noonday  din- 
ner with  a  running  commentary  upon  his  life 
at  Rominten, 

His  greatest  hardship  used  to  be  protecting 
the  forest  from  poachers.  He  told  us  that  the 
last  head  game-keeper  here  had  been  shot  by  a 
poacher,  but  remarked,  by  way  of  a  consoling 
foot-note,  that  his  successor  managed  to  kill  two 
poachers  at  one  shot.  It  would  seem  as  though 
next  to  impossible  to  prevent  poaching  in  such 
a  vast  forest  as  this,  yet  he  assured  me  that  with 
proper  organization  they  had  succeeded  in  al- 
most suppressing  this  nuisance.  The  staff  of 
foresters  numbers  from  forty  to  fifty  men,  whose 
principal  occupation  is  the  patrolling  of  the 
woods,  according  to  preconcerted  arrangement, 
studying  trees  and  plants,  and  noting  everything 
that  affects  the  welfare  of  the  beasts  which  pro- 
vide sport  for  the  emperor  and  his  guests. 

It  is  only  since  1890  that  the  emperor  has 
taken  a  fancy  to  this  hunting-ground,  and,  until 
he  built  the  hunting-lodge  for  whose  inspection 
we  had  sought  permission,  he  lived  at  the  little 
inn  where  we  had  ordered  dinner,  and  slept  in 
the  very  room  from  the  window  of  which  Rem- 
ington made  a  sketch  of  the  building.  The  place 
appeals  strongly  to  the  emperor,  because  it  is  so 
thoroughly  natural  and  wild,  in  refreshing  con- 


222  IHK    nORI'KRI.AND    Ol"    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

trast  to   man}'  royal   parks,  where  the  grass   ap- 
pears to  be  trimmed  by  a  lawn-mower,  and  every 

tree  has,  so   to  speak, 
^^gb  its  hair  brushed  every 

^?Vt  morning.    William  II., 

'\'_  '<^  too,  is  the   first    mon- 

'-^r  " v,^  arch    of    Europe    who 

'f^^     i  \  has  appreciated  the  val- 

(    y     L     .     }    \  Lie  of  American  meth- 

^;  (  ods  of  travel,  and  has 

so  organized  his  train 
of    cars    that    he    can 
*^,    (Lu^-^   \  move  from  one  end  of 

\  his  empire  to  the  other 

\  not  only  without  per- 

sonal fatigue,  but  un- 
der conditions  that  en- 
able him  to  transact 
state  business  as  satis- 
\  factorih'  as  if  he  were 

*~"  in    his    working -room 

at  Potsdam  or  Berlin. 
The  Chicago  Vestibule 

Limited  finds  its  coun- 

-^y^^"^^^^^^-  terpart  in  the  German 

imperial    train,    which 

GERMAN  I'KASANT,  EAST  PRUSSIA    may   bc    Said   to  have 

doubled  the  capacity 
for  work  of  a  monarch  mainly  criticised  because 
of  his  superabundant  energy.     People  who   find 


EMPEROR    WILLIAMS    STUD-FARM    AND    FOREST     223 

fault  with  the  emperor  because,  as  they  say,  he 
is  perpetually  rushing  from  one  corner  of  Europe 
to  the  other,  forget  that  it  is  not  he  who  does  the 
rushing,  but  the  train  of  cars  under  him.  His  life, 
meanwhile,  is  as  placid  and  methodical  as  one 
could  wish,  but  where  his  grandfather  was  satis- 
fied to  know  a  man  through  a  written  report, 
William  II.  prefers  to  see  that  man  face  to  face. 

But  this  is  digression.  The  old  forester  illus- 
trated the  formerly  neglected  condition  of  this 
forest  by  telling  us  that  thirty  years  ago  there 
were  not  more  than  fifteen  head  of  deer  in  the 
wdiole  chase,  thanks  to  neglect  and  poaching ; 
to-day  it  is  estimated  that  there  are  at  least  one 
thousand,  thanks  for  which  are  mainly  due  to 
the  excellent  administration  of  the  late  forester 
who  was  shot  by  the  poacher.  Two  months  be- 
fore we  visited  the  place  wild-boar  had  been  in- 
troduced, and  already  four  young  ones  had  been 
born  on  the  estate.  This  will  prove  an  additional 
attraction  for  the  future,  as  the  wild-boar  is  no- 
toriously one  of  the  gamiest  of  animals.  There 
arc  some  moose  here  as  well,  differing  scarcely  at 
all  from  those  of  New  Brunswick  and  Maine,  but 
it  is  doubtful  whether  this  animal  will  survive. 
The  sport  most  relished  here  is  the  chase  after 
the  big  red  deer,  of  which  about  one  hundred 
and  fifty  are  shot  annually.  At  different  points 
in  the  forest  we  came  upon  racks  at  which  the 
deer  feed  during  severe  winters,  when  food  has  to 


be  provided  for  them,  but  they  offered  nothing 
in  their  structure  to  call  for  particular  comment. 
Here,  as  in  our  first  approach  to  the  house,  we 
were  struck  by  the  diversity  and  fine  growth  of 
the  oak,  beech,  ash,  elm,  chestnut,  linden,  and 
evergreen  trees  about  us.  Also  by  the  great  di- 
versity in  the  surface  of  the  ground,  in  marked 


EMPEROR   WILLIAM  .S    STUD  FARM    AND    FOREST     225 

contrast  to  the  rest  of  the  great  Prussian  plain. 
There  were  steep  little  hills,  beautiful  gorges, 
and,  travelling  as  we  did,  it  appeared  as  though 
we  were  in  a  hilly  country,  with  streams  in  every 
valley,  the  slopes  of  which  had  been  laid  out 
with  consummate  art  to  simulate  the  Adiron- 
dacks. 

Wolves,  according  to  our  worthy  forester,  are 
a  great  nuisance,  and  do  a  vast  amount  of  mis- 
chief. Last  year  the  keepers  shot  a  most  savage 
beast,  who  did  an  extraordinary  amount  of  injury 
to  the  other  animals.  It  seemed  impossible  to 
find  him  until  the  following  plan  was  adopted  : 
A  wide  circle  was  made  about  the  spot  in  which 
they  knew  he  must  have  his  hiding-place  ;  this 
line  was  marked  off  by  twigs  planted  in  the 
ground  at  short  intervals.  Packthread  was  then 
drawn  from  twig  to  twig,  connecting  the  whole 
circle  excepting  at  one  point,  where  an  opening 
was  left,  near  which  the  hunters  stationed  them- 
selves. At  intervals  of  ten  feet  red  and  yellow 
bits  of  rag  were  hung  upon  this  line,  for  it  was 
discovered  that  a  wolf  will  not  cross  an  impedi- 
ment of  this  nature,  which  reminds  one  of  the 
superstitious  feeling  the  chicken  is  said  to  have 
in  regard  to  crossing  a  chalk -line.  The  wolf 
made  his  appearance  in  due  course  of  time,  and 
went  from  rag  to  rag  in  the  hope  of  finding  a 
way  out.  When  he  did  so,  however,  it  was  to 
fall  into  the  hands  of  his  avengers,  who  shot  him 


226         THE    nORDF.RI.AND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

on  the  i5tli  clay  of  November,  1891.  He  was 
stuffed,  and  is  now  scowling,  through  ghiss  eyes 
only,  in  one  of  the  corners  of  the  hunting-lodge 
-a  fine-looking  beast,  whose  acquaintance,  how- 
ever, I  should  not  like  to  have  made  under  any 
other  circumstances. 

Our  dinner  was  quite  a  festive  affair,  for  in  the 
midst  of  this  wilderness  had  congregated  at  one 
and  the  same  time  not  only  the  forester  and  the 
major-domo  of  the  palace,  but  a  high  economic, 
functionary  from  Berlin,  who  was  here  to  make 
an  inspection  of  the  emperor's  property.  All 
three  received  us  in  the  spirit  of  fellowship, 
caused  perhaps  by  the  fact  that  on  returning  to 
the  inn  we  found  a  dispatch  from  the  Lord 
Chamberlain  at  Potsdam,  informing  us  that  the 
emperor  had  given  us  the  permission  we  desired. 
It  was  a  permission  which  we  had  had  little  rea- 
son to  anticipate,  because  an  inventory  of  the 
place  was  being  made,  the  furniture  was  in  a 
somewhat  confused  state,  and  clerks  were  at 
work  on  the  premises. 

This  hunting-lodge  of  the  emperor's  is  a  cross 
between  the  typical  Swiss  chalet  and  an  Ameri- 
can log  house ;  there  is  a  striking  amount  of 
quaint  Norwegian  carving  about  it,  and  the  raf- 
ters of  the  roof  come  to  a  point  in  the  shape  of 
grinning  dragons'  heads— a  feature  of  Scandina- 
vian architecture  I  had  noticed  at  many  points 
in  Norway.     The  emperor  took  a  great  fancy  to 


EMPEROR  William's  stud-farm  and  forest    229 

the  simplicity  and  strength  characterizing  Nor- 
wegian buildings  on  his  many  journeys  along 
that  coast,  and  had  a  dozen  Norwegian  builders 
come  down  on  purpose  from  Christiania  in  order 
to  erect  this  house  for  him.  It  is,  of  course,  un- 
painted,  and  finished  in  the  most  severe  style,  as 
befits  the  purpose  for  which  it  was  originally 
designed.  Inside,  the  walls  and  ceilings  are  all 
of  the  natural  logs,  finished  off  roughly  and 
stained.  The  ceilings  are  low,  the  rooms  small, 
but  every  corner  is  pervaded  with  coziness.  The 
large  assembly  or  living  room  looks  down  a  se- 
ries of  rustic  terraces  to  the  little  valley,  where 
the  trout  stream  runs  from  the  Russian  frontier 
to  the  Baltic.  At  one  end  of  this  large  room  is 
a  great  double  fireplace,  about  which  a  large 
family  can  gather  in  the  evening  for  the  pur- 
pose of  spinning  hunting-yarns  or  telling  ghost- 
stories.  It  is  an  exact  counterpart  of  the  fire- 
place in  many  a  Norwegian  house  I  have  seen, 
reproduced  here  with  minute  fidelity.  From 
the  ceiling  hangs  an  elaborate  chandelier  con- 
sisting entirely  of  antlers,  so  arranged  as  to  form 
innumerable  holders  for  candles. 

The  emperor  strongly  dislikes  anything  in  the 
nature  of  guards  when  he  is  on  his  hunting  ex- 
peditions, although  half  a  dozen  country  police- 
men do  duty  here  when  the  emperor  is  present. 
On  his  first  arrival  they  were  drawn  up  in  line  to 
salute   him,  but   he  ordered  that  it  should   not 


230         IHE    r.ORDKULAND    OI'    C/AR    AND    KAISER 

happen  ai;"ain.  aiul  now  they  arc  carefully  kept 
out  of  sight.  He  is  a  man  so  indifferent  to  dan- 
ger or  personal  safety  that  the  mere  idea  of  hav- 
ing officials  watching  on  his  account  is  in  the 
hiehest  decree  distasteful.  The  furniture  of  the 
rooms  at  Rominten  was  in  harmony  with  the  sim- 
plicity of  the  walls — hard -wood,  strongly  made, 
and  merely  stained,  so  as  to  disclose  the  nat- 
ural grain,  which  is,  after  all,  the  greatest  charm 
about  any  furniture.  On  the  walls  hung  many 
pictures  of  hunting  scenes,  notably  the  magnifi- 
cent studies  of  Landseer.  Amongst  the  pictures 
our  guides  pointed  out  two  which  they  said  had 
been  done  by  the  emperor  himself.  I  suspected 
the  authorship  at  the  time,  because  they  were 
colored  copies  of  notable  paintings,  and  I  knew 
that  the  emperor  preferred  to  do  something 
more  original  than  merely  copy  the  work  of  an- 
other. Of  course  I  did  not  mention  my  doubts 
to  these  officials,  but  on  complimenting  the  em- 
peror in  regard  to  them,  shortly  afterwards,  he 
emphatically  disclaimed  their  authorship,  and 
gave  me  the  name  of  the  friend  who  had  copied 
them.  However,  it  is  now  a  tradition  in  the 
palace  of  Rominten  that  these  two  pictures  were 
done  by  the  emperor,  and  there  is  little  doubt 
that  successive  generations  of  care-takers  will  re- 
ceive this  tradition,  and  spread  the  error  amongst 
all  those  who  visit  that  interesting  house.  We 
may  expect  before  long  to  see  these  works  re- 


J^^ 


A    FORES  r Ell 


EMPEROR   WILLIAM  S    STUD-FARM    AND    FOREST     233 

produced  in  some  magazine  as  evidence  of  the 
emperor's  taste  as  an  artist.  He  is,  it  is  true, 
clever  with  his  pencil,  but  in  a  different  and  more 
important  way  than  is  suggested  by  his  alleged 
works  at  his  hunting-box. 

His  study  is  a  room  of  equal  simplicity  with 
the  others,  so  arranged  that  should  he  arrive  at 
an  hour's  notice  he  would  find  it  ready  for  work. 
On  the  table  in  front  of  him  stands  a  little 
framed  photograph  of  his  wife.  There  is  scarce- 
ly more  than  room  enough  in  the  apartment 
for  the  large  table  which  he  always  requires  for 
the  purpose  of  spreading  out  maps  and  plans. 
The  room  is  a  literary  workshop,  and  no  more. 
Amongst  the  ornaments,  however,  I  noticed  an 
excellent  photograph  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  his 
uncle,  looking  very  slim  and  graceful  in  the  uni- 
form of  a  Prussian  hussar. 

Naturally,  the  most  interesting  points  about 
the  place  were  the  many  antlers  fastened  to  the 
wall  as  trophies  of  the  chase.  The  forester  told 
us  that  hunting  here  was  not  such  an  easy  matter 
as  one  might  suppose ;  that  they  often  went  six 
days  without  finding  any  game,  although  on  the 
very  next  day  they  might  kill  two.  He  thought 
a  fair  average  would  be  to  bag  one  deer  in  every 
four  days.  The  antlers  which  appeared  to  be 
the  most  numerous  belonged  to  the  Damhirsch 
or  Damwildpret ;  they  resemble  the  big  red  deer 
of  Europe,  but   have  at  the  same  time  a  sug- 


234         'HK    nORDERLAND    OK    CZAR    A\l>    KAISER 

L^cstioii  of  the  moose  in  the  shovel  character  of 
part  of  their  horns.  We  were  shown  the  hoof  of 
one  of  these  animals,  which  I  measured  and 
found  to  be  thirteen  centimetres  in  breadth,  or 
about  four  and  a  half  inches.  As  I  said  before, 
the  moose  is  dying  out,  but  an  effort  is  being 
made  to  cross  it  with  Norwegian  in  the  hope  of 
reviving  the  breed. 

The  emperor,  as  is  well  known,,  is  a  capital 
shot,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  has  little  more 
than  one  arm  to  do  his  work  with.  His  rifle  is 
notable  in  an  exceeding  length  of  stock,  by 
which  he  is  able  to  shoot  with  his  right  hand 
alone.  By  long  practice  and  natural  aptitude  he 
has  succeeded  in  making  one  almost  forget  that 
his  left  arm  is  very  weak.  As  a  matter  of  detail, 
the  sportsman  may  care  to  know  that  the  favor- 
ite rifle  for  deer  in  this  place  is  thirteen  mil- 
limetres calibre,  with  which  eight  grammes  of 
powder  are  used.  The  trophies  that  here  adorn 
the  walls  have  a  value  far  above  those  which 
decorate  the  hunting- lodges  of  most  princes, 
who,  when  they  go  out  shooting,  stand  in  a  fa- 
vored spot  and  allow  the  game  to  be  driven  by 
them,  much  as  one  would  a  drove  of  sheep  or 
cows.  The  game  here  has  to  be  legitimately 
hunted,  and  it  is  this  very  difficulty  in  securing 
a  shot  that  makes  Rominten,  in  the  eyes  of  the 
emperor,  a  favorite  shooting-ground. 

The    characteristic    Norwegian    decoration    of 


A   STALLION 


the  hunting-lodge  is  carried  out  at  other  points 
of  the  forest,  notably  a  bridge  which  we  crossed 
on  our  forenoon's  journey  with  the  venerable 
postmaster- forester  and  his  two  shaggy  Polish 
ponies.  The  bridge  was  of  rough-hewn  logs  rest- 
ing upon  two  series  of  piles,  protected  up-stream 
against  descending  masses  of  ice,  exactly  as  in 
the  rapid  torrents  of  Norway.  Over  the  bridge 
is  an  arch,  made  by  two  beams  crossing,  at  each 
end  of  which  is  carved  the  same  draconical  de- 
sign  characterizing  the   gables   of    the  hunting- 


236        THE    P.ORDERI.AND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

Iodide.  This  bridt^e  is  interesting  from  the  fact 
that  it  was  built  in  four  days  by  "eighty-five  men 
of  the  pioneer  corps,  who  marched  to  this  point 
for  this  purpose,  did  their  work,  and  returned. 

We  parted  from  Rominten  with  many  regrets, 
particularly  from  the  rheumatic  old  forester  who 
had  done  so  much  to  make  our  day  brimful  of 
pleasant  memories  of  a  glorious  forest  and  a 
unique  race  of  woodcraftsmen. 


ON  A  RUSSIAN  FARM 

THE  sight  of  my  friend  Alsenstorm  was  very 
cheering  to  me,  for  it  was  three  o'clock  in 
the  morning;  the  train  from  St.  Petersburg  had 
banged  me  about  since  the  evening  before.  I  was 
at  a  small  station  on  the  line  to  Moscow ;  from 
the  platform  I  could  detect  nothing  but  gloomy 
infinities  of  forest  and  swamp.  No  one  about 
the  place  spoke  French,  English,  or  German  ;  my 
passport  was  in  the  possession  of  the  police  of 
the  capital ;  I  had  slipped  away  without  permis- 
sion, and  had  not  my  friend  finally  appeared,  I 
should  have  been  in  awkward  plight. 

Alsenstorm  is  of  an  ancient  Scandinavian  stock 
that  has  been  conspicuous  in  Russian  history  since 
the  days  of  Gustavus  Adolphus.  He  had  been 
educated  in  Moscow  ;  had  inherited  vast  estates 
near  this  station ;  I  had  made  his  acquaintance, 
no  matter  where,  and  had  run  down  to  get  a 
glimpse  of  him  and  his  farming. 

The  trap  that  conveyed  him,  or  rather  that 
floundered  through  the  mud  under  him,  was  the 
common  peasant  cart  that  is  found,  in  different 
degrees  of  modification,  from  Holland  to  Siberia, 


238         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER^ 

aiul  from  tlie  Baltic  to  the  Danube  or  the  Cau- 
casus. With  a  little  increase  in  expenditure  it 
develops  into  a  gentleman's  carriage,  though  in 
this  case  it  was  so  heavih'  incrusted  with  thick 
black  mud  that  I  could  hardly  tell  whether  the 
wheels  had  spokes.  The  heavily  bearded  peas- 
ant who  drove  sat  on  a  narrow  board  in  front, 
his  feet  resting  outside  the  wagon.  .\t  the  cen- 
tre was  a  cushioned  bench  for  two  passengers, 
and  behind  was  ample  room  for  luggage. 

Three  tough  little  native  mustangs  were  hitched 
abreast  to  this  vehicle.  They  showed  much  of 
the  quickness  that  characterizes  horses  accus- 
tomed to  pick  their  own  way,  and  dodged  about 
among  the  mud-holes  as  cleverly  as  our  Western 
ones  do. 

Alsenstorm  is  the  tj'pe  of  a  man  that  Russia 
needs  to-day  more  than  she  ever  did  before,  but 
which  she  is  persecuting  with  blind  desperation. 
He  is  a  blue-eyed,  light-haired,  broad-shouldered, 
inquiring,  enterprising  giant.  He  is  a  sports- 
man, and  stood  before  me  with  his  trousers  in- 
side a  pair  of  long  boots  ;  a  much  be-pocketed 
blouse,  belted  at  the  waist  ;  a  cartridge-belt  over 
his  shoulder;  a  sporting-rifle  in  his  hand ;  a  loose 
gray  military  cloak  oi)en  about  his  shoulders  ;  a 
gray  felt  hat  suggestive  of  our  cowboy.  The 
twinkle  of  his  eye,  the  warm  grasp  of  his  hand, 
the  firm  way  in  which  he  stands  squarely  on  both 
soles  at  once,  all  his  attributes,  are  attractive  to 


ON    A    RUSSIAN    FARM  239 

me,  and  I  marvelled  that  he  should  live  in  such 
a  neighborhood. 

"  Glad  to  sec  you,"  said  he,  in  excellent  Eng- 
lish. "  Here  is  a  caviare  sandwich,  and  here  a 
flask  of  Madeira.  Put  them  inside  of  you  im- 
mediately, for  we  have  a  long  drive  before  break- 
fast." 

I  obeyed. 

Alsenstorm  read  my  thoughts  as  we  thumped 
and  bumped  through  the  mud.  From  my  inter- 
course with  him  in  another  country  I  had  been 
led  to  expect  something  better  in  the  way  of  an 
estate  than  what  he  was  inflicting  upon  me  now. 
There  was  an  awkward  silence.  He  then  said  to 
me  : 

"  Since  living  here,  I  have  become  charitable 
to  suicides — I  become  desperate  with  the  desire 
to  talk  honestly  and  freely."  He  looked  at  me 
a  moment  with  pathetic  earnestness,  then,  in  the 
manner  of  a  man  that  determines  upon  a  great 
risk,  he  said  :  "  I  think  you  are  safe.     Listen. 

"  My  family  is  Russian,  if  two  centuries  on 
Russian  soil  can  make  it  such.  Our  name  has 
never  been  absent  from  the  government  list  of 
military  or  civil  servants  of  the  czar — our  family 
has  served  the  czar  with  loyalty.  But  since  the 
present  rule  we  have  become  '  suspect,'  because 
our  blood  is  not  Slav,  our  religion  is  not  Greek. 
My  blood  remains  Scandinavian,  my  religion  is 
Protestant,  and  until  I  renounce  my  creed  I  shall 


240        THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

continue  to  be  regarded  by  the  priests,  the  peas- 
ants, and  the  poHce  as  one  incapable  of  genuine 
loyalty  to  Russian  ideas. 

"  While  studying  at  Moscow  I  knew  that  I 
should  inherit  the  vast  landed  estate  which  con- 
stitutes all  our  wealth  to-dny.  For  the  purpose 
of  fitting  myself  to  take  charge  of  this  property 
I  went  abroad  and  studied  in  Germany  the  best 
methods  of  irrigation,  cattle-breeding,  engineer- 
ing, bridge- building,  etc.  I  was  fired  with  the 
ambition  of  making  my  estate  a  centre  of  infor- 
mation for  the  surrounding  villages.  I  adored 
the  czar  who  had  freed  the  serfs ;  I  looked  upon 
the  Russian  peasant  as  a  regenerating  force, 
the  unspoiled,  generous,  progressive  element  that 
would  take  advantage  of  its  liberty,  would  build 
primary  schools,  would  lift  itself  into  power,  and 
act  as  a  wholesome  check  upon  official  corrup- 
tion and  centralized  tyranny. 

"You  see,  I  knew  my  peasant  only  from  nov- 
els, as  some  philanthropic  Americans  knew  the 
negro  before  your  great  Civil  War.  I  came  to 
my  great  estate  full  of  zeal  for  the  rights  of  man, 
the  dignity  of  labor.  I  was  determined  to  show 
my  Russian  neighbors  that  the  emancipated  serf 
becomes  a  self-respecting  farmer  if  treated  with 
consideration. 

"Accordingly,  my  first  act  was  to  call  the 
elders  of  the  peasants  together,  and  to  tell  them 
that  henceforward   they  were  to  be  treated  as 


ON    A    RUSSIAN     FARM  241 

free  men,  and  that  the  last  vestige  of  serfdom 
was  to  be  abolished.  They  appeared  apathetic, 
but  I  believed  it  to  be  for  their  good,  and  they 
consented. 

"In  my  father's  time,  even  after  1861,  when 
serfdom  was  abolished,  the  peasants  all  continued 
their  old  relations,  preferring  to  work  on  shares 
rather  than  pay  rent.  With  my  advanced  no- 
tions of  liberty,  this  smacked  of  medi?evalism  ;  I 
wished  to  pay  in  money  for  the  day's  work  of  a 
free  man.  Consequently,  the  peasants  bought 
themselves  loose.  Under  the  Emancipation  Law 
they  received  a  certain  amount  of  land  to  work 
on  their  own  account  ;  the  purchase  price  was 
advanced  to  them  by  government,  and  was  to 
be  repaid  out  of  increased  taxes.  I  received 
from  the  state  a  lump  sum  for  my  land,  and 
this  money  I  promptly  applied  to  improvements. 
Bridges  and  roads  were  repaired  ;  I  started  a 
brick  factory,  so  that  I  might  have  better  ma- 
terial for  my  proposed  new  buildings  ;  the  out- 
look was  splendid  ;  and  the  crowning  happiness 
was  in  the  thought  that  henceforth  I  was  to 
deal,  not  with  serfs,  but  honest  and  industrious 
freemen. 

"  Early  in  the  spring  I  had  more  laborers  than 
I  needed,  but  as  the  year  wore  on  towards  har- 
vest they  became  lazy,  and  some  of  them  disap- 
peared. This  did  not  worry  me,  for  I  was  confi- 
dent that  the  great  majority  were  bound  to  me 


242         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

in  gratitude  and  loyalty.  One  fine  day,  however, 
I  was  asked  to  step  outside,  that  the  peasants 
wished  to  speak  with  me.  I  came  to  the  door 
and  said,  in  my  most  friendly  manner  :  '  Well, 
children,  what  is  up  ?'  They  behaved  respect- 
fully, but  I  noticed  that  they  had  a  dogged  ap- 
pearance. '  Please,  your  honor,'  said  a  black- 
bearded  one,  who  acted  as  spokesman,  '  we  can't 
work  any  longer  at  the  present  rate  ;  the  peas- 
ants twenty  versts  from  here  are  getting  twice 
as  much,  and  we  must  have  the  same.' 

"  In  such  a  case  my  sense  of  justice  spoke  for 
the  peasants.  The  story  they  told  was  a  lie,  but 
I  did  not  know  it  at  the  time,  and  in  order  to 
show  them  that  they  had  in  me  the  right  kind 
of  an  employer,  I  answered  without  hesitation : 

"  '  Certainly,  children  ;  you  shall  have  as  good 
wages,  and  I  hope  you  will  now  work  twice  as 
hard.' 

'"That  we  shall!'  shouted  they,  earnestly ;  but 
they  did  not  move. 

"'Anything  more  you  would  like?'  asked  I, 
with  some  irritation. 

"  Then  the  long  peasant  with  the  black  beard 
spoke  for  the  crowd.  '  We  cannot  go  to  work 
unless  you  pay  us  half  the  wages  in  advance.' 

"  '  Nonsense  !'  said  I.  '  You  will  only  go  to  the 
rum-shop  with  it.' 

"  But  they  doggedly  insisted.  I  saw  my  beau- 
tiful fields  ready  for  harvest,  and  recognized  the 


ON    A    RUSSIAN     FARM  243 

painful  dilemma  in  which  I  was  placed — either 
pay  these  dishonest  peasants  or  risk  my  whole 
crop.  So  I  paid  them  the  stipulated  half,  and 
they  went  off  to  work  full  of  zealous  promises. 

"  A  short  time  after  this  I  rode  out  to  the 
fields  and  could  not  see  a  single  harvester.  The 
overseer  came  to  me  wringing  his  hands  : 

"  '  My  God,  my  God  !'  he  said  ;  the  scoundrels 
heard  of  a  church  festival  three  hours  from  here  ; 
they  have  all  gone  ;  I  can  get  no  one  to  take 
their  place.' 

"  I  saw  that  nothing  could  be  done.  They 
had  broken  their  contract,  and  the  law  allowed 
me  to  sue  them.  But  that  would  not  save  my 
crops !  I  returned  to  the  house  with  shaking 
convictions  regarding  the  value  of  '  free  labor,' 
and  waited  a  few  days  until  they  returned  and 
had  recovered  from  their  prolonged  spree. 

"  The  next  time  I  met  my  peasants  they  were 
sitting  in  a  ditch,  passing  a  brandy-bottle  from 
mouth  to  mouth.  With  difificulty  they  found 
their  feet.  Of  course  I  gave  them  a  strong  lect- 
ure on  their  dishonesty,  and  threatened  them 
with  the  legal  consequences  of  their  breach  of 
contract.  This  lecture  made  not  the  slightest 
impression  ;  but  when  I  was  done,  the  long  black- 
bearded  spokesman  again  came  forward,  and  told 
me  that  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  do  any 
work  unless  I  paid  them  the  other  half  of  their 
wages   in    advance.     At  this  I  was  furious,  and 


244        THE    RORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

rated  them  soundly ;  they  h'stened  good-natured- 
ly, but,  like  children,  repeated  their  request — 
finally  saying,  flatly,  that  it  was  impossible  for 
them  to  go  on  with  the  harvest  unless  they  had 
their  money  in  advance. 

"  I  was  in  their  power  ;  there  was  no  labor  to  be 
had  excepting  the  former  serfs  ;  my  fine  crops 
were  lost  unless  I  could  have  them  immediately 
harvested.  So  I  once  more  yielded.  They  re- 
ceived now  their  full  pay  in  advance,  and  for  a 
couple  of  days  worked  like  happy  children.  On 
the  third  day,  however,  a  large  share  of  them 
disappeared,  and  by  the  end  of  the  week  I  had 
not  a  single  one.  Half  of  my  crop  was  left  rot- 
ting in  the  field,  to  be  finally  buried  by  the 
snow. 

"  Meanwhile  I  noticed  from  time  to  time  that 
planks  and  beams  were  missing  from  my  bridges. 
At  first  I  sought  to  replace  them  ;  but  finally 
gave  the  matter  up,  and  we  now  plash  through 
the  streams  as  best  we  can.  The  peasants  stole 
the  wood  for  fires  rather  than  bother  to  cut  it  for 
themselves,  and  had  not  the  slightest  interest  in 
keeping  the  highways  open.  I  tried  to  catch  the 
thieves,  but  the  peasants  hold  together  like  a 
secret  society,  and  all  my  efforts  failed.  I  did 
learn,  however,  that  the  peasants  who  had  taken 
my  money  and  broken  their  contracts  were  not 
far  off ;  so  I  had  the  spokesman  arrested  for  the 
sake  of  an  example,  and  he  was  locked  up  for 


ON    A    RUSSIAN    FARM  245 

five  days — five  happy  days  to  him,  for  they  were 
passed  in  complete  idleness. 

"  A  week  after  this  came  a  grain-dealer  from 
Moscow,  and  I  signed  a  contract  for  the  little 
crop  I  had  harvested  at  a  fairly  good  rate.  The 
grain  was  to  be  delivered  on  sleds  in  two  days, 
and  I  figured  that  with  the  proceeds  of  this  grain 
I  should  close  the  year  with  only  a  small  loss. 
As  I  was  figuring,  the  overseer  burst  into  the 
room  with  a  shout : 

" '  The  barns  are  on  fire  !' 

"  '  It  cannot  be,'  I  said,  quietly;  'you  are  mis- 
taken.' 

"  But  I  was  soon  convinced.  The  guilty  one 
was  never  brought  to  trial ;  no  one  could  be  found 
who  knew  anything  about  it.  But  in  the  vil- 
lages every  man,  woman,  and  child  was  telling 
how  the  long  black-bearded  spokesman  had  taken 
his  revenge." 

The  story  of  Alsenstorm  I  have  told  because 
it  is  a  common  one  all  over  Northern  and  Central 
Russia,  and  because  it  explains  the  "  down-at- 
the-heel  "  condition  of  agriculture  in  the  czar's 
dominions.  Had  it  not  been  pointed  out  to  me, 
and.  explained  by  competent  authority,  I  should 
still  have  suspected  that  something  was  very  rot- 
ten about  a  system  that  produced  millions  of 
peasants  who  lived  like  animals — not  animals  of 
much  value  either,  for  from  the  Black  Sea  to  the 
Gulf  of  Finland,  whether  in  Bessarabia  or  Kieff, 


246         THE    nORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

Kovno  or  Novgorod,  Volynicn  or  Poland,  wherc- 
cvcr  I  have  seen  a  well-thatched  hut,  a  well-fed 
cow,  a  well-dressed  mother,  or  a  well-made  road, 
I  have  usually  had  to  learn  that  it  was  owing  to 
exceptional  circumstances,  or  that  it  was  a  Ger- 
man or  "  Kurland  "  colony. 

In  Russia  nothing  is  done  without  violence 
and  police  assistance.  Nothing  develops,  noth- 
ing ripens,  nothing  grows  from  little  beginnings. 
When  the  czar  wanted  nobles,  he  ordered  them 
as  he  would  order  a  regiment ;  the  social  grades 
of  Russia  have  been  regulated  by  imperial  edicts 
and  with  no  reference  to  grades  above  or  grades 
below.  The  noble  was  placed  above  the  serf, 
and  so  long  as  the  noble  held  a  knout  in  his 
hand  the  serf  worked  fairly  well.  Thirty  years 
ago,  however,  the  czar  took  the  knout  out  of  the 
noble's  hand,  and  told  the  serf  he  could  do  as 
he  pleased.  Since  that  day  the  condition  of  the 
landed  proprietor  has  become  steadily  worse  ;  but, 
what  is  more  to  the  point,  the  condition  of  the 
peasant  has  not  improved.  In  one  county  of 
the  province  of  Moscow,  said  my  friend,  out  of 
208  estates,  188  have  been  allowed  to  go  to  rack 
and  ruin — no  cow,  no  horse,  no  workmen  to  be 
seen.  In  the  same  province,  out  of  298  estates, 
there  are  only  eighteen  on  which  the  owners  live 
the  greater  part  of  the  year.  If  this  is  the  case 
in  a  province  holding  the  second  city  of  the  em- 
pire, what  can  the  state  of  things  be  in  other  and 


ON    A    RUSSIAN     FARM  247 

less  -  favored  parts?  The  Russian  government 
gives  us  no  reliable  figures  from  which  an  econo- 
mist can  draw  exact  conclusions  ;  but  Alsenstorm, 
who  knows  what  he  says,  tells  me  that  the  state 
of  agriculture  in  Russia  is  deplorable,  that  Mos- 
cow is  typical  of  the  whole  country,  and  that  the 
present  condition  of  things  shows  no  sign  of  im- 
provement. To  understand  Russia,  one  must  go 
into  the  hut  of  the  peasant,  exactly  as  one  must 
know  the  cabin  of  the  negro  before  discussing  poli- 
tics south  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line. 

The  Russian  peasant  is  worth  a  diagnosis,  for 
his  class  represents  about  nine-tenths  of  his  vast 
country.  Profoundly  ignorant  and  helpless — for 
reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic  are  occult  sci- 
ences to  him— he  must  always  lean  up  against 
some  one  else.  He  knows  only  what  he  is  told 
by  his  priest  and  equally  shallow  neighbors,  and 
is  infinitely  credulous  and  superstitious.  He 
will  believe  any  smooth-tongued  scoundrel  who 
promises  him  something  nice,  but  is  very  suspi- 
cious of  an  educated  person  who  encourages  him 
to  work  and  lay  aside.  Work  of  any  kind  he  dis- 
likes, particularly  if  it  requires  consecutive  energy; 
and  agriculture  is  the  kind  of  work  he  likes  least 
— his  taste  is  more  for  trafficking.  He  has  no 
love  for  the  soil  on  which  he  has  been  raised,  is 
restless,  fond  of  change.  His  main  pleasure  is 
gossip  in  the  tavern  over  a  glass  of  brandy.  He 
is  without    moral    character,  addicted    to    petty 


248         THE    liORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

thievin*^,  lies  fluently,  has  no  aversion  to  begging, 
and  is  constantly  expecting  that  some  happy  ac- 
cident will  better  his  fortunes. 

This  is  the  man  to  wliom  the  future  of  Russia 
was  intrusted  thirty  years  ago,  and  history  sadly 
confirms  my  friend  Alsenstorm  in  stating  that 
the  peasant  of  to-day  is,  if  anything,  more  devoid 
of  moral  character,  more  shiftless,  more  drunken, 
more  dishonest,  more  ragged  even  than  in  1861, 
The  record  of  elementary  education  in  Russia 
proves  that  the  peasant  cares  little  for  the  means 
of  raising  himself.  He  has  exchanged  masters 
and  made  a  bad  bargain.  To-day  he  is  the  slave 
of  the  man  who  has  advanced  him  a  little  money 
on  his  crop  or  his  cattle ;  of  the  tax-gatherer ; 
and  of  the  village  community.  The  peasant  to- 
day is  a  pauper;  he  is  constantly  in  debt,  and 
hounded  by  creditors  more  merciless  than  the 
most  brutal  of  his  former  masters.  He  has  not 
the  fuel  to  warm  his  house  in  winter,  he  huddles 
his  whole  family  and  himself  on  to  the  stove  at 
night,  and  when  that  does  not  keep  warm  he  fills 
his  hut  with  cattle  to  raise  the  temperature. 
His  life  is  as  hopeless  as  that  of  the  dumb  brutes 
he  consorts  with,  and  the  vodka  he  drinks  gives 
to  him  the  only  paradise  he  is  capable  of  grasp- 
ing. 

The  serfs  worked  because  they  were  flogged  if 
they  did  not.  Many  philanthropists  believed 
they  would  work   harder   as   free   men    than   as 


ON    A    RUSSIAN     FARM  249 

slaves.  The  knout  was  abolished ;  but  they 
stopped  working.  As  serfs  the  master  was  bound 
to  see  that  they  had  good  houses,  that  they  were 
well  clad,  that  they  had  proper  medical  attend- 
ance. He  punished  the  idlers,  but  he  had  a  di- 
rect interest  in  having  on  his  estate  only  the 
strong  and  healthy.  Now  the  sickly  peasants  rot 
in  their  cabins,  and  no  one  cares.  The  harvest 
fails,  and  no  granaries  have  been  filled.  There  is 
no  one  to  insist  upon  rational  methods  of  agri- 
culture, and  consequently  the  soil  is  exhausted, 
and  short-sighted  selfishness  plays  havoc  on  all 
sides.  The  landed  proprietor,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  violently  deprived  of  labor  he  has  counted  on 
in  the  past,  he  is  left  with  a  large  tract  of  land 
surrounded  by  peasants,  who  lay  siege  to  him  as 
to  a  declared  enemy.  The  landed  proprietor  is 
regarded  as  one  whom  every  peasant  can  rob 
without  offending  the  moral  sense  of  his  class, 
for  so  great  is  the  gulf  between  the  late  serfs 
and  their  land-owners  that  as  yet  every  attempt 
to  identify  their  interests  has  failed.  The  late 
master,  finding  his  life  intolerable  in  the  country, 
sells  his  land  to  estate  agents,  or  disposes  of  it  in 
any  way  he  can,  and,  wherever  possible,  lives  in 
town,  or  solicits  some  small  salaried  post.  In 
this  way  the  only  people  who  have  the  means  and 
the  intelligence  to  raise  agriculture  are  gradually 
disappearing  from  Russian  country  life,  as  they 
have  from  Ireland,  as  they  have  from  the  South- 


250         THE    RORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    ANP    KAISER 

cm  States.  Their  places  arc  taken  by  shrewd 
agents,  who  have  no  interest  but  to  hne  their 
own  pockets  by  squeezing  what  they  can  out  of 
the  estate  and  the  peasantry  round  about. 

The  Russian  nobleman  never  was  the  ideal 
farmer,  any  more  than  the  Russian  peasant  can 
be  called  a  good  farm-hand.  Both  have,  how- 
ever, been  the  victims  of  such  legislation  as 
would  probably  have  harmed  the  agriculture  of 
any  country. 

If  a  German  devil  had  stalked  through  Russia 
and  scratched  his  head  for  the  purpose  of  de- 
vising the  greatest  mischief  that  could  be  done 
her,  I  fancy  he  would  have  hit  upon  the  present 
system  of  peasant  community.  The  czar  who 
signed  this  wicked  law  meant  to  do  good,  but  he 
gave  another  illustration  of  the  great  danger  that 
governments  run  when  they  permit  the  caprice 
of  a  philanthropist  to  override  all  practical  ex- 
perience of  industrial  and  social  development. 

The  Russian  peasant  of  to-day  is  something  of 
a  Communist  or  Socialist.  He  is  one  of  a  com- 
munity owning  land  in  common.  In  most  local 
matters  affecting  the  little  village  of  one  or  two 
hundred  souls  he  has  a  voice,  and  the  govern- 
ment that  affects  him  most  nearly  is  that  of  the 
elders  whom  he  has  helped  to  put  in  power. 
Out  of  the  common  land  he  receives  a  share 
proportionate  to  the  size  of  his  family,  and  this 
share  he  is    supposed  to   cultivate    with  public- 


ON    A    RUSSIAN     FARM  25 1 

spirited  zeal.  Every  few  years  the  elders  declare 
a  new  partition  of  land,  owing  to  changes  in  the 
community  caused  by  deaths,  marriages,  births,  or 
emigration  to  other  parts  of  the  country.  This 
repartition  of  land  sounds  very  just,  and  even 
practical,  to  one  who  has  never  seen  the  peasant. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  the  one  feature  of  mod- 
ern Russia  that  makes  improvement  impossible  ; 
for  is  it  likely  that  you  or  I  would  work  hard 
upon  a  piece  of  land  if  next  year  it  were  to  pass 
out  of  our  control?  Is  it  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  an  ignorant  peasant  is  going  to  carefully 
manure  a  patch  the  benefit  of  which  is  to  be 
reaped  by  his  neighbor?  In  the  Russian  village 
system  the  peasant  who  has  done  his  work  well 
often  finds  that  he  has  to  exchange  his  field  for 
the  neglected  one  of  a  neighboring  drunkard. 
Little  by  little  the  energy  of  the  most  public- 
spirited  evaporates,  and  each  seeks  to  get  what 
he  can  from  the  soil  with  the  least  possible  ex- 
penditure of  work.  In  the  days  of  serfdom  there 
was  a  master  who  looked  to  it  that  the  fields 
were  properly  tilled  and  the  soil  not  exhausted. 
To-day  there  is  no  such  check  upon  the  peasant's 
idleness. 

Whoever  reads  this  no  doubt  says  to  himself: 
"  But  why  does  not  the  peasant  shake  himself  free 
from  this  stupid  community,  and  buy  land  and 
raise  himself  to  the  position  of  an  independent 
farmer?" 


252  THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

Odclly  enough,  not  only  does  the  peasant  not 
do  this,  but  he  does  not  even  show  the  desire  to 
emerge  from  the  slavery  of  his  fellows.  The  old 
landlords  arc  only  too  glad  to  make  easy  terms  of 
purchase  for  any  one  who  will  take  their  acres, 
but,  so  far,  the  only  purchasers  are  speculators 
and  land-sharks  from  the  towns,  who  trafifiic  in  es- 
tates with  no  reference  to  increasing  their  values. 
Occasionally  a  peasant  has  shown  sufficient  en- 
ergy to  get  possession  of  a  little  patch  adjoin- 
ing that  of  his  "  communistic  "  one,  but  the  vil- 
lage elders  eye  such  a  proceeding  suspiciously, 
and  his  fellows  are  apt  to  boycott  one  who  pre- 
tends to  be  better  than  the  rest.  If  the  energetic 
peasant  proposes  to  manure  his  property,  the 
elders  interfere  and  order  him  first  to  manure 
the  one  he  holds  in  common ;  the  village  elders 
exercise  an  almost  absolute  control  in  their  com- 
munity, even  to  the  extent  of  sending  to  Siberia 
any  peasant  they  regard  as  "  unsafe."  Nothing 
in  their  eyes  is  so  "  unsafe  "  as  to  show  a  dis- 
position to  rise  above  the  common  level  of  the 
communistic  herd,  and  such  a  one  they  are  able 
to  ruin  if  they  bear  a  grudge  against  him. 

For  the  government  in  Russia  does  not  tax 
the  individual  peasant ;  it  ignores  him  completely, 
and  notices  only  the  village  elders,  who  repre- 
sent a  community  of  about  two  hundred  souls. 
Their  elder  chief  is  responsible  to  the  government 
for  the  taxes,  and  his  authority  is  unquestioned  so 


ON    A    RUSSIAN    FARM  253 

long  as  the  tax-collector  is  satisfied.  Obviously, 
the  community  at  large  looks  with  hatred  upon 
any  member  who  expends  any  part  of  his  energy 
outside  of  the  community,  and  many  other  reasons 
conspire  to  force  the  peasant  to  remain  stuck  in 
the  mire,  even  had  he  the  training,  education,  and 
blood  of  the  German.  Perhaps  of  these  reasons 
the  most  potent  is,  that  no  peasant  can  move 
from  his  village  without  the  consent  of  the  elders, 
and  this  permission  cannot  be  granted  unless  the 
peasant  has  paid  his  obligations,  both  at  the  vil- 
lage store  and  the  tax-office.  The  Russian  peas- 
ant resembles  the  Southern  negro,  in  that  both 
are  quick  to  seek  credit  of  the  usurer,  and  both 
averse  to  settlement,  the  consequence  of  which 
is  that  the  Jew  of  Alabama  or  Georgia  bears  a 
close  resemblance  to  the  village  elders  of  Nov- 
gorod or  Kieff. 

"  In  spite  of  what  I  have  suffered  at  their 
hands,"  said  Alsenstorm,  "  I  cannot  help  feeling 
sorry  for  these  poor  Russian  peasants.  They 
cling  to  a  communism  that  has  made  them  little 
better  than  wild  beasts  or  paupers  ;  they  court 
ignorance,  and  are  the  prey  of  a  besotted  priest- 
hood ;  they  have  all  the  faults  of  children,  and 
scarcely  a  virtue  that  we  associate  with  man. 
Let  me  tell  you  something  else  : 

"  One  fine  winter's  morning  sleigh-bells  jingled 
in  our  village.  A  police-captain  and  his  lieuten- 
ant made  their  appearance,  wrapped  up   in  furs. 


254         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

Behind  them  was  a  mysterious  bundle  covered 
with  a  cloth.  This  all  happened  before  I  set- 
tled here,  but  the  impression  is  fresh  still.  The 
peasants  gathered  quickly  about  the  strangers, 
anticipating  nothing  good  from  the  appearance 
of  a  police-officer  in  their  midst.  The  captain 
alighted  slowly  from  the  sleigh,  eyed  his  audi- 
ence sharply,  while  he  calculated  the  amount  he 
could  wring  from  them  ;  then  said  sternly  : 

"  '  Where  is  your  village  elder?' 

" '  Here,  your  grace,'  answered  a  white-haired, 
venerable  peasant,  bowing  abjectly. 

" '  Your  name  ?'  continued  the  police  cap- 
tain. 

"  '  Ivan  Ivanovitch,  your  grace,'  answered  the 
old  man,  bowing  again  almost  to  the  earth. 

"  '  Ivan  Ivanovitch,'  said  the  captain  impres- 
sively, addressing  the  congregation  of  trembling 
peasants,  '  a  terrible  crime  has  been  committed 
close  to  this  village  on  your  land.' 

"  '  In  God's  name,  what  ?'  asked  the  old  man, 
turning  pale. 

" '  See,  then,  for  yourself,'  said  the  police-cap- 
tain ;  and  with  that  he  threw  off  the  cover  and 
revealed  to  the  panic-stricken  gaze  of  the  sim- 
ple villagers  the  mutilated  body  of  a  dead  man. 
'  This  is  a  frightful  crime,'  continued  the  captain, 
'  and  there  must  be  a  dreadful  retribution.  Your 
community  is  responsible  for  this  murder,  and 
must  bear  the  consequences.     There  must  be  a 


ON    A    RUSSIAN     FARM  255 

commission  sent  here  ;  the  matter  must  be  in- 
vestigated.' 

"  '  Anything  but  that !'  begged  the  village  el- 
der piteously,  stroking  and  kissing  the  captain's 
coat.  He  knew  too  well  that  such  a  commission 
meant  ruinous  fines,  to  say  nothing  of  floggings 
for  every  witness.  The  peasants  with  one  voice 
joined  in  the  appeal :  '  Anything  but  a  judicial 
inquiry,' 

"  '  But  the  matter  is  very  serious,'  said  the  cap- 
tain ;  '  an  inquiry  must  be  held.' 

" '  But  perhaps  you  can  help  us  out  of  the 
trouble,'  said  the  elder,  persuasively. 

"  '  Perhaps !'  mused  the  captain.  '  But  it  will 
cost  me  a  lot  of  money.' 

"'What  do  you  want  us  to  pay?'  asked  the 
elder. 

"'One  hundred  rubles  may  do  it,'  said  the 
captain. 

'  "  '  One  hundred  rubles  !'  screamed  the  desper- 
ate peasants.  '  We  haven't  got  so  much  in  the 
whole  place  ;  you  want  to  ruin  us !' 

" '  Take  fifty,'  pleaded  the  venerable  elder. 

"  '  What,  you  rascals  !  do  you  take  me  for  a 
beggar,  that  you  seek  to  dicker  with  me  ?  How- 
ever, you  seem  to  be  poor ;  I  shall  insist  only  on 
seventy.' 

"The  peasants  agreed  sadly  to  the  bargain; 
the  money  was  paid  ;  the  captain  and  his  lieuten- 
ant climbed  into  the  sleigh  once  more,  and  drove 


256         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

away  with  the  corpse  to  the  next  village.  Here 
they  repeated  the  same  performance,  and  as  long 
as  the  cold  weather  lasted  that  corpse  repre- 
sented at  least  fifty  rubles  out  of  every  village 
community  it  visited.  Of  course,  that  particular 
trick  will  not  be  repeated  in  our  lifetime;  but 
others  just  as  brutal  will  take  its  place,  for  the 
peasants  are  always  ready  to  be  fooled  and 
fleeced  by  any  one  who  comes  along  dressed 
either  as  a  policeman  or  a  priest. 

"  Speaking  of  priests,"  continued  Alsenstorm, 
"  there  are  priests  and  priests.  Ours  are  mostly 
coarse  and  corrupt,  and  not  essentially  difTerent 
from  the  peasants  they  are  supposed  to  elevate. 
They  do  not  get  proper  pay  from  the  govern- 
ment, and  unless  they  are  industrious  and  work 
their  land  very  thoroughly  they  cannot  make  a 
very  good  show  at  the  end  of  the  year.  There 
are,  however,  a  great  many  indirect  ways  in  which 
they  make  this  deficit  good,  and  where  their 
flocks  are  far  from  the  main  line  of  travel  they 
have  many  temptations  to  line  their  own  pockets 
under  the  pretence  of  collecting  for  their  church. 
Of  course  they  make  quite  a  little  trade  by  funer- 
als, weddings,  and  the  like ,  and  vastly  more  by 
blessing  cattle  and  crops,  and  frightening  away 
devils  and  plagues.  With  a  peasantry  so  credu- 
lous and  helpless  as  that  of  Russia,  the  post  of 
village  priest  is  one  of  great  power  and  consider- 
able profit. 


ON    A    RUSSIAN     FARM  257 

"  Somewhat  to  the  eastward  of  us  is  a  village 
where  they  have  what  they  call  Black  Day.  It 
is  not  well  for  me  to  designate  time  and  place  too 
closely ;  I  only  add  that  this  village  is  inhabited 
by  very  poor  peasants,  who,  somehow  or  other, 
have  slipped  aw^ay  from  the  gentle  ministrations 
of  the  Greek  Orthodox  Church. 


A     MISSIONARY    TALE 

"  One  fine  da}',  when  the  sun  was  shining 
kindly,  the  flowers  smiling  sweetly,  and  the  birds 
proclaiming  the  goodness  of  God,  a  panting  lad 
rushed  into  the  place  shouting  '•Black  Day!' 
The  peasants  flew  from  their  huts  to  learn  more 
of  the  sad  news  ;  mothers  clutched  their  babies, 
fathers  clinched  their  teeth,  even  little  children 
realized  that  danger  was   near. 

"  *  What  have  you  seen  ?'  asked  the  mothers. 

"  '  A  priest  with  a  district  inspector  in  one 
wagon,  and  another  wagon  full  of  police.' 

"  A  thick  cloud  of  dust  appeared  between 
the  last  houses  of  the  village,  and  soon  the  two 
wagons  drew  up  in  the  centre  of  the  wretched 
place.  Out  jumped  the  priest  ;  behind  him  stood 
the  soldiers,  one  of  whom  held  a  rope. 

"  '  Here,  you,'  said  the  priest  sternly,  pointing 
to  the  nearest  villager,  'show  me  your  certificate 
of  having  come  to  communion?' 
17 


258         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

"  '  Dearest  father,'  answered  the  peasant,  '  I 
haven't  got  it.' 

"You  dog!'  continued  the  Gospel  messenger, 
'  why  did  you  stay  away  from  communion?' 

"'The  harvest — hard  work — my  wife  was  ill. 
Oh,  forgive  me,  dear  little  father!'  cried  the 
wretched  man.  And  falling  on  his  knees,  he 
clutched  the  hem  of  the  priest's  robe. 

"'I'll  teach  you  to  find  time,'  said  the  priest, 
significantly.  '  Twenty-five  will  suit  him — eh  ?' 
said  he,  turning  to  the  district  inspector,  whose 
military  cap,  rows  of  brass  buttons,  belt,  boots, 
and  sword  gave  a  strangely  military  character  to 
the  missionary  enterprise. 

"  The  inspector  had  been  a  non-commissioned 
officer  in  the  army,  had  served  in  the  Turkoman 
campaign,  and  understood  the  Oriental  methods 
of  earning  money  by  official  means.  He  and 
the  priest  were  working  this  route  on  joint  profits, 
and  there  was  no  danger,  therefore,  that  the  secu- 
lar arm  of  the  law  would  be  raised  to  shield  the 
crouching  heretic  from  the  sentence  of  the  eccle- 
siastical one. 

"  The  priest's  query  was  answered  by  an  ap- 
proving nod,  and  the  police  servants  promptly 
produced  from  beneath  the  second  wagon  a  bench 
constructed  with  particular  reference  to  the  dimen- 
sions of  a  human  body.  The  peasant  was  roped 
dowm  to  this  with  a  dexterity  born  of  constant 
practice,  and  a  police  soldier  commenced  to  lay 


ON    A    RUSSIAN     FARM  259 

on  the  blows  with  a  heavy  hish.  At  the  nintli 
blow  the  back  of  the  priest's  victim  suggested 
the  meat  on  a  butcher's  block,  and  at  the  tenth 
he  roared  out : 

"  '  Dearest  father,  have  mercy  !  I  will  pay  what 
I  can !' 

"  The  police-inspector  ordered  a  halt,  and  the 
priest  asked,  gently : 

" '  Well,  what  will  you  pay  for  your  sins,  my 
sweet  child  ?' 

"  '  Five  rubles !'  groaned  the  victim. 

'"That's  a  fine  joke,'  laughed  the  police-in- 
spector. '  You  take  us  for  fools.  Ha,  ha  !  only 
five  rubles.  Go  on  with  the  flogging.'  And 
the  hissing  lash  cut  deeper  into  the  peasant's 
back. 

"  '  You  shall  have  ten  !'  roared  the  peasant. 

"  '  Nonsense  ;  go  on  with  the  flogging,'  answered 
the  police-inspector. 

"'Twenty!'  finally  came  from  the  half-dead 
body  on  the  butcher's  bench. 

"  The  priest  leaned  his  mouth  to  the  poor  fel- 
low's ear  and  said,  insinuatingly: 

"  '  Let  me  intercede  for  you  ;  make  it  twenty- 
five — that  is  a  nice  round  sum  ;  it  breaks  my 
heart  to  have  you  suffer.  Shall  we  say  twenty- 
five  ?' 

"  The  peasant  could  only  nod  his  head  feebly 
in  sign  of  assent.  The  soldiers  unstrapped  him, 
his  shirt  w^as  thrown  over  his  bleeding  body,  and 


26o         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

away  he  staggered  to  his  hovel.  The  Httle 
money  he  had  saved  in  the  hopes  of  bu\'ing  a 
cow,  or  perhaps  paying  off  arrears  of  taxes,  was 
taken  from  him,  and  put  into  the  pockets  of  the 
priest  and  his  official  partner.  That  night  was  a 
bitter  one  in  the  hut  of  that  poor  man  and  his 
family.  His  only  crime  had  been  to  worship 
God  as  he  saw  fit.  He  had  harmed  no  man,  had 
violated  no  law  which  a  civilized  man  can  re- 
spect. That  poor  peasant  is  too  poor  to  emi- 
grate, too  ignorant  to  change  his  occupation,  too 
helpless  to  avoid  the  petty  tyranny  that  presses 
upon  him.  His  cries  never  reach  the  outer 
world,  for  to  him  hcavoi  is  high  and  the  czar  is 
far  away.  No  newspaper  correspondents  pene- 
trate to  his  miserable  corner,  and  if  they  did 
they  would  never  have  gone  back  alive.  Priest 
and  police  can  do  there  pretty  much  as  they  like. 
No  questions  will  be  raised,  so  long  as  the  gov- 
ernment receives  the  amount  of  taxes  it  has  rea- 
son to  expect." 

Alsenstorm's  story  made  me  feel  sick,  for  it 
went  on  to  tell  me  how  the  clerical  beast  went 
on  from  one  peasant  to  the  other,  flogging  each 
in  turn,  until  he  had  squeezed  out  all  the  money 
that  could  reasonably  be  expected.  Afterwards 
the  cabins  were  searched  in  turn  for  any  images 
or  emblems  that  might  be  unorthodox,  and  when 
the  visitation  was  completed  the  peasants  stared 
blankly  at  one  another,  as  people  over  whom  a 


ON    A    RUSSIAN    FARM  26 1 

devastating  blizzard  has  passed.  Of  course,  I 
suggested  to  my  friend  that  the  case  he  men- 
tioned must  be  very  exceptional  indeed. 

"  Exceptional  !"  exclaimed  he,  excitedly.  "  I 
wish  it  were.  The  Greek  Church,  backed  by  the 
Third  Section,  is  visiting  every  village  of  the 
empire,  in  the  same  spirit,  if  not  with  the  same 
instruments,  that  I  have  referred  to.  The  Prot- 
estants of  the  Baltic  provinces,  the  Finns,  the 
Poles,  the  non-conforming  Russians  in  every  part 
of  the  country,  the  German  colonists  in  Bessa- 
rabia— all  are  the  objects  of  persecution  to  the 
fullest  possible  extent.  The  more  remote  the 
heretic,  the  more  brutal  are  the  means  employed 
for  his  conversion.  In  communities  where  the 
people  are  educated  the  priests  have  to  be  care- 
ful, but  the  spirit  that  underlies  the  war-cry 
of  'Russia  for  the  Russians'  is  the  same  that 
watched  the  flogging  of  that  bleeding  heretic  to 
the  eastward  of  us.  The  Russian  Church  im- 
proves nothing  ;  it  can  only  drag  down,  flog,  and 
^  exterminate.  Give  it  time,  and  one  day  we 
shall  lose  the  little  light  that  still  glimmers  in 
Poland  and  along  the  Baltic." 

At  the  close  of  our  long  drive  I  was  amazed  to 
find  a  village  whose  streets  were  clean,  whose 
houses  were  substantially  built  and  in  good  re- 
pair. The  little  children  looked  as  though  they 
had  prosperous  fathers  and  mothers — in  other 
words,  it  did  not  seem  like  Russia.      The  fields   I 


262         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

had  passed  showed  good  husbandry,  the  cattle 
looked  strangely  sleek ;  in  short,  all  the  signs 
were  such  as  I  thought  to  have  left  behind  me 
when  I  crossed  the  frontier. 

"  I  meant  to  give  you  a  shock,"  said  Alsen- 
storm,  "  and  now  I  will  tell  you  about  it.  The 
people  you  find  about  me  now  are  from  the  Bal- 
tic provinces  of  Kurland  and  Livland — countries 
settled  originally  by  Germans ;  I  have  attracted 
them  to  this  wilderness  by  giving  them  the  op- 
portunity of  purchasing  a  portion  of  my  land  on 
reasonable  terms,  and  spreading  payment  over 
many  years.  They  are  all  peasant-proprietors, 
these  Kurlanders,  self-respecting,  thrifty,  indus- 
trious people.  Their  blood  is  not  German,  but 
their  people  have  enjoyed  centuries  of  German 
civilization.  They  are  Slav,  and  would  be  as 
dirty  and  shiftless  as  their  kinspeople  of  Rus- 
sia, had  they  known  no  other  government  than 
that  of  the  drunken  elder  or  the  county  police. 
In  the  land  they  come  from  the  roads  are  well- 
made  and  maintained ;  every  village  has  a  tidy 
school-house.  The  fields  are  well  drained  and 
cultivated ;  the  nobles  live  upon  their  estates, 
and  exercise  an  excellent  influence  about  them, 
in  the  administration  of  justice  and  the  main- 
tenance of  local  institutions.  The  people  be- 
long mostly  to  the  Lutheran  Church,  and  every- 
where you  find  well-educated  clergymen,  who 
do  their  duty  conscientiously,  foster  liberal  educa- 


ON    A     RUSSIAN     FARM  263 

tioii,  and  cultivate  their  land  thoroughly.  The 
people  of  these  Baltic  provinces  have  been  loyal 
to  the  czar  throughout  the  two  centuries  that 
they  have  belonged  to  his  empire.  They  have 
enjoyed  a  large  measure  of  local  self-government, 
and  it  is  this  that  has  made  them  so  superior  to 
the  rest  of  Russia.  Their  towns  are  centres  of 
commercial  and  intellectual  activity  ;  no  schools 
in  Russia  compare  with  those  which  the  Germans 
maintain  there,  and  the  University  of  Dorpat  is 
far  beyond  anything  dreamed  of  by  a  Russian. 
The  people  of  these  provinces  were  emanci- 
pated from  serfdom  nearly  a  generation  before 
the  Russian  edict  was  promulgated.  The  czar's 
government  has  produced  misery  and  mischief 
by  its  measure  ;  the  German  provinces  effected 
the  change  so  simply  and  wisely  that  it  has  re- 
sulted in  blessings.  The  Russian  emancipation 
created  a  vast  gulf  between  the  noble  and  peas- 
ant, which  thirty  years  has  only  widened.  The 
emancipation  along  the  Baltic  has  created  an 
excellent  class  of  independent  farmers,  who  re- 
gard their  interests  as  identical  with  those  of 
their  former  landlords,  and  who  take  the  liveliest 
interest  in  protecting  their  present  system  of 
education  and  administration  against  the  demor- 
alizing influence  of  the  Russian  priest  and  po- 
liceman. 

"The  Baltic  nobles  discussed  the  question  of 
emancipation   long  and   thoroughly  in    liic   first 


264         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

half  of  the  century.  Tlicy  dehberately  voted 
the  measure  as  an  economic  necessity,  although 
there  was  among  them  a  large  party  that  thought 
they  would  be  ruined  by  the  transaction.  They 
had,  however,  to  deal  in  these  provinces,  not 
with  a  peasantry  debased  by  centuries  of  igno- 
rance and  oppression,  but  with  a  set  of  sturdj' 
people  who  had  been  gradually  raised  to  a  high 
religious  and  educational  standard.  The  nobles 
voted  that  each  estate  should  alienate  the  major- 
ity o.f  its  acreage  to  such  peasants  as  chose  to 
purchase  at  a  valuation  fixed  by  law,  and  in  pay- 
ments covering  a  long  series  of  years.  Other  ar- 
rangements, such  as  working  on  shares,  were  also 
made.  The  peasant  thus  not  only  became  at 
once  a  free  man,  but  earned  the  right  to  purchase, 
on  reasonable  terms,  the  land  on  whicli  his  family 
may  have  thrived  for  centuries  past.  That  the 
peasants  of  Kurland  and  Livland  have  availed 
themselves  at  all  of  these  practical  provisions 
shows  not  only  that  they  are  intelligent  and  in- 
dustrious, but  speaks  equally  well  for  the  good 
sense  of  the  proprietors  who  voted  the  laws. 
More  than  half  of  the  land  of  that  country  is  in 
the  hands  of  independent  farmers,  and  every  year 
the  number  increases." 

I  stopped  my  friend  here  to  ask  him  if  Kur- 
land and  Ireland  had  anything  in  common. 

"  The  Irish  question  is  the  easiest  in  the  world, 
if  you  will  only  stop  agitation  and  study  it  prac- 


ON    A    RUSSIAN     FARM  265 

tically.  The  great  difficulty  in  Ireland  is,  how- 
ever, that  the  Roman  Catholic  peasantry  is  grossly 
ignorant,  and  has  quite  lost  touch  with  the  only 
men  who  are  in  a  position  to  help  it — namely, 
the  landed  proprietors.  So  far  as  I  can  see,  the 
dispossessed  Irish  are  about  as  shiftless  and  help- 
less as  the  Russian  peasants,  and  perhaps  for  the 
same  reason — centuries  of  neglect  and  supersti- 
tious priestcraft. 

"If  the  peasants  you  see  about  me  were  of 
German  origin  you  might  attribute  their  pros- 
perity to  that  fact.  But  they  are  not,  and  that  is 
the  interesting  feature  of  the  problem.  It  shows 
conclusively  that  the  Russian  government  has 
degraded  and  pauperized  its  own  people,  and 
that  it  will  do  the  same  for  those  of  the  Bal- 
tic provinces,  when  it  succeeds  in  undoing  what 
German  patience  has  to-day  achieved." 

"  But  if  the  people  of  the  German  provinces 
are  so  happy  at  home,"  I  queried,  "  why  do  they 
emigrate  to  Russia?" 

"  If  I  were  a  Yankee,"  answered  Alsenstorm, 
with  a  laugh,  "  I  would  answer  you  with  another 
question — ^Why  does  America  get  her  largest 
emigration  from  the  best-governed  and  most  pros- 
perous countries  ?  Why  do  Germany  and  Austro- 
H angary  send  you  together  nearly  200,000  in  one 
single  year — for  these  are  two  countries  of  enor- 
mous wealth,  and  representing  a  well-adminis- 
tered   and    prosperous    area.     Why  should  they 


266         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

leave  their  homes  and  the  advanced  civilization 
that  surrounds  them,  and  go  away  to  battle 
with  the  hardships  of  a  new  country?  Of  course 
they  go  to  make  money ;  but  then,  why  do  not 
other  countries  emigrate  in  the  same  proportion? 
How  happens  it  that  these  two  countries  send 
annually  to  your  country  more  emigrants  than 
Russia,  Turkey,  and,  I  might  add,  the  rest  of  the 
non-European  world,  where  wages  are  very  much 
lower,  and  the  lot  of  man  infinitely  harder?  I 
say  nothing  of  England  and  Ireland,  for  they 
speak  your  own  language  ;  yet  is  it  not  odd  that 
England  alone  sends  to  America  quite  as  many 
emigrants  as  Russia?  Is  it  that  wages  are  lower 
in  England  than  in  Russia?  Of  course  not.  The 
Russian  peasant  is  too  dull,  too  drunken,  to  make 
the  necessary  effort.  The  emigrant  is  the  man 
who  has  saved  something,  who  is  prepared  to 
look  ahead,  who  will  work  hard  to  achieve  inde- 
pendence. The  German  emigrates  more  readily 
than  the  Russian,  because  he  is  a  better-educated 
and  more  self-reliant  man. 

*'  I  am  now  answering  your  question.  The 
peasant  of  the  Baltic  provinces  comes  to  Rus- 
sia because  the  landlords  here  offer  him  their 
acres  at  vastly  more  profitable  rates  than  he 
can  secure  in  Kurland.  It  proves  that  land  is 
hard  to  get  in  Kurland  and  comparatively  cheap 
in  Russia.  It  proves  further  that  the  Baltic  peas- 
ant   has    much    pluck   and    self-reliance,    or    he 


ON    A    RUSSIAN     FARM  267 

would  not  venture  here,  among  a  population  that 
hates  him  for  his  creed,  hates  him  for  his  sup- 
posed German  affiliations,  and  finally  hates  him 
for  getting  on  in  the  world.  The  Russian  peas- 
ant, in  a  country  where  land  is  sold  for  almost 
nominal  prices,  finds  himself  crowded  out  by  a 
strange  people,  who  convert  swamps  into  mead- 
ows, and  become  rich  on  land  which  they  have 
always  regarded  as  waste.  The  Kurlander's 
farm  is  an  oasis  in  a  desert  of  Russian  retrogres- 
sion. The  Russian  landlord  prays  for  his  arrival. 
He  knows  that  every  farm  prospers  when  a  Kur- 
lander  takes  charge.  But  Kurlanders  are  hard 
to  get.  They  feel  themselves  in  the  enemy's 
country  when  their  future  rests  with  police  and 
priests  of  Holy  Russia.  It  is  bad  enough  to  bat- 
tle with  the  malice  and  dishonesty  of  the  Russian 
peasant,  but  it  is  a  little  too  much  to  have  the 
priest  and  police  also  on  the  side  of  barbarism." 
Alsenstorm  is  making  the  experiment.  He 
will  probably  fail  in  this,  as  he  did  in  the  first, 
and  we  shall  perhaps  soon  hear  that  he  and  half 
his  colony  have  been  shipped  to  the  salt-mines 
of  Kara  for  spreading  ideas  that  are  dangerous 
to  society.  He  is  at  present  doing  the  one  thing 
which  the  Russian  police  cannot  pardon  :  he  is 
teaching  the  people  about  him  to  desire  some- 
thing better  than  they  have  known  before. 


PREACHING   THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA 

THE  Baltic  provinces  of  Russia  extend  from 
the  frontier  of  Prussia  almost  to  St.  Pe- 
tersburg, and  belong  to  Russia  by  virtue  of  a  com- 
pact guaranteeing  to  the  people  of  that  prov- 
ince religious  and  civil  liberty,  according  to  the 
law  which  they  brought  with  them  from  Ger- 
many. Peter  the  Great  confirmed  this  consti- 
tution to  them,  and  the  Emperor  Alexander  II. 
subscribed  to  it  in  1856  ;  the  present  czar,  Alex- 
ander II.,  however,  in  1885,  repudiated  the  obli- 
gations solemnly  entered  into  by  his  ancestors, 
and  by  this  act  removed  the  only  barrier  pro- 
tecting this  province  against  persecution  by  the 
orthodox  clergy.  The  Russian  government  had 
constantly  invaded  the  liberties  of  their  German 
subjects,  but  had  never  questioned  them  in  the- 
ory until  the  present  reign.  The  late  czar,  in 
fact,  went  so  far  as  to  rebuke  the  Greek  clergy 
for  their  intemperate  proselytizing  zeal  in  the 
Baltic  provinces,  and  in  1865  he  issued  a  secret 
order  to  them  that  they  might  henceforth  stop 
meddling  with  Lutheran  peasants. 

The  present  czar  gave  the  following  answer  to 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  269 

the  Protestant  people  who  begged  of  him  only 
the  right  to  worship  God  according  to  the  usage 
of  their  fathers  :  "  That  his  majesty  had  read 
the  petition,  and  had  been  pleased  to  order  that 
such  request  should  never  again  be  made.  His 
majesty  hoped  that  the  nobles  would  do  their 
duty  towards  the  absorption  of  the  Baltic  prov- 
inces into  the  rest  of  Russia,  and  in  this  man- 
ner show  their  loyalty.  His  majesty  regarded 
the  Baltic  provinces  exactly  as  he  did  the  rest 
of  Russia,  and  would  deal  out  to  them  equal  jus- 
tice and  also  equal  law,  without  any  privileges 
whatever." 

This  answer  meant  that  from  that  time  forth 
the  Baltic  provinces  were  handed  over  to  the 
government  of  the  Greek  Church  and  the  Rus- 
sian police,  without  any  reference  to  solemn 
promises  often  renewed.  What  the  present 
state  of  things  is  may  be  gathered  from  the  story 
of  Dr.  Brandt,  a  Protestant  clergyman,  at  a  place 
called  Palzmar,  who  was  dismissed  from  his  post 
and  expelled  from  the  country  by  the  Russian 
government  for  the  crime  of  having  preached 
the  gosi^el. 

Shortly  before  the  twenty- fifth  anniversary 
of  his  pastorate,  on  P^ebruary  2,  1883,  he  re- 
ceived from  his  superiors  notice  that  he  had 
been  criminally  charged  at  the  bar  of  the  Greek 
Church  for  having  married  peasants  who  had 
left  the  Protestant  Cliurch,  had  gone  over  to  the 


270         THE    RORDERI-ANI)    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

(jrcck,  repented,  ;iik1  had  now  come  back  to  their 
tli'st  preacher.  This  case  was  being  tried  when, 
in  May  of  1886,  he  was  brought  before  the  crim- 
inal court  for  the  same  offence,  and  also  for  hav- 
ing confirmed  people  of  his  own  religious  faith. 
Before  this  tribunal  the  pastor  was  completely 
acquitted,  at  least  by  the  reconverted  peasants, 
who  insisted  that  they  were  Lutherans,  had  never 
been  anything  else,  and  did  not  wish  to  change 
their  faith. 

It  ought  to  be  explained  here  that,  prior  to 
1865,  about  a  hundred  thousand  peasants  of  the 
country  had  been  lured  into  the  Greek  Church  by 
promises  of  land  and  other  worldly  advantages 
which,  at  the  time,  were  particularly  effective,  as 
the  country  had  suffered  three  successive  years 
of  bad  crops,  and,  moreover,  the  Greek  priests 
assured  them  that  there  was  no  difference  be- 
tween Lutherans  and  orthodox,  excepting  that 
the  orthodox  enjoyed  the  favor  of  the  czar,  and 
the  Lutherans  could  not  be  regarded  as  anything 
else  than  disloyal  subjects. 

To  make  a  long  story  short,  these  poor  peas- 
ants soon  found  out  their  mistake — first,  that  they 
did  not  get  the  land  that  was  promised  them,  and 
secondly,  that  they  had  changed  the  ministry  of 
educated  and  spiritually-minded  men  for  a  rit- 
ual gorgeous  enough  in  its  externals,  but  as  bar- 
ren of  Christian  cjualit)'  as  the  Llama  Temple  of 
Pekin. 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  271 

Now  in  Russia  an  orthodox  priest  can  abuse 
a  Protestant  as  much  as  he  pleases,  and  prosely- 
tize to  his  heart's  content ;  but  if  a  Protestant 
dares  address  an  orthodox  on  the  subject  of  re- 
ligion, he  commits  a  crime  in  the  eyes  of  the  law. 
The  Greek  priests,  therefore,  had  the  field  to 
themselves,  in  coaxing  away  Protestant  peasants 
of  weak  understanding;  but  not  a  Protestant 
clergyman  dared,  in  the  pulpit  or  anywhere  else, 
to  explain  to  his  people  the  difference  between 
the  orthodox  and  the  Lutheran  system  of  religion. 
In  spite  of  this,  however,  the  peasants  came  flock- 
ing back  to  their  former  pastors,  begging  to  have 
their  children  christened,  their  brothers  and  sis- 
ters wedded,  or  their  parents  laid  in  the  grave, 
according  to  the  rites  of  their  own  religion. 
But  this  was  against  the  law,  albeit  the  law  ran 
counter  to  their  ancient  constitution.  The  Prot- 
estant peasants  might  become  orthodox,  but  they 
could  not  change  back  into  the  Protestant  faith, 
they,  or  their  children,  or  their  children's  chil- 
dren. Great  was  the  panic,  therefore,  when  it 
became  clear,  from  the  arrest  of  Dr,  Brandt, 
that  they  were  forever  to  be  cut  off  from  Prot- 
estant communion,  on  account  of  a  thoughtless 
step,  taken  under  extraordinary  pressure.  They 
commenced  to  organize,  and  to  devise  measures 
by  which  they  could  free  themselves  from  the 
orthodox  yoke. 

At  about  this  time,  in  May  of  1885,  there  ar- 


272         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

rived  a  Greek  bishop  from  Riga  to  this  quiet 
place  on  a  journey  of  inspection.  A  crowd  of  the 
reconverts  gathered  about  the  place,  awaiting  his 
arrival,  and  hoping  from  him  to  obtain  the  per- 
mission they  so  much  coveted  of  once  more  com- 
muning with  their  own  people.  The  bishop  went 
into  the  Greek  church,  and  after  a  short  service 
there  came  out,  and  by  means  of  an  interpreter 
invited  the  people  to  come  in  to  listen  to  a 
service  which,  he  assured  them,  they  would  soon 
learn  to  enjoy.  He  said,  also,  that  he  would 
make  them  a  present  of  books.  But  the  peas- 
ants shook  their  heads,  and  said  they  were  Lu- 
therans, who  had  only  come  to  beg  the  bishop 
henceforth  to  consider  them  as  not  of  the  ortho- 
dox church.  Upon  this  the  bishop  told  them 
that  they  had  come  there  at  the  instigation  of 
the  Lutheran  pastor;  but  this  they  emphatically 
denied,  assuring  their  accuser  that  they  came  be- 
cause their  conscience  troubled  them,  and  they 
wished  to  persist  as  Lutherans.  The  bishop  then 
took  another  course,  and  pointed  out  that  the 
Greek  Church  was  stronger  than  the  Lutheran, 
which  would  soon  go  to  pieces,  and  that  the  czar 
was  orthodox,  and  only  through  him  could  any 
one  secure  everlasting  happiness.  He  told  them 
that  the  Lutherans  would  not  be  considered  at 
the  Judgment  Day,  but  would  lie  rotting  in  their 
graves,  whereas  the  orthodox  would  rise  and  go 
to  heaven.     A  peasant  then  asked  the  bishop  if 


PREACHING    THE    GdSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  273 

any  one  had  ever  seen  an  orthodox  lisinLj  up  to 
heaven,  and  another  asserted  that  if  they  dug 
up  the  graves  of  Lutheran  and  orthodox  they 
would  find  that  the  orthodox  were  in  no  better 
state  of  preservation  than  the  Lutherans.  The 
bishop  then  threatened  that  he  would  have  their 
Protestant  pastor  dismissed,  and  leave  them  en- 
tirely without  a  church,  if  they  did  not  behave 
themselves  as  orthodox.  Whereupon  the  peas- 
ants answered  that,  even  if  this  took  place  they 
would  have  the  Word  of  God  within  them,  and 
would  no  doubt  bury  one  another  after  a  fashion; 
would  form  a  Lutheran  society,  and  appoint  the 
most  learned  among  them  to  tender  the  sacra- 
ment. 

On  the  following  day  came  Anne  Kursem- 
neeks,  a  thirty-two-year-old  peasant  of  the  place, 
accompanied  by  her  sponsors.  They  declared  to 
the  bishop  that  she  was  baptized  a  Lutheran,  and 
begged  of  him  a  certificate  to  the  effect  that  the 
orthodox  clergy  had  no  claim  upon  her.  The 
bishop  answered  curtly  that  the  Lutheran  pastor 
must  have  instigated  her  to  this  step,  otherwise 
she  would  not  have  come,  for  if  she  had  been 
baptized  a  Greek,  and  entered  in  the  church  book 
as  a  Greek,  she  would  have  to  remain  orthodox. 
But  she  answered  that  she  had  come  entirely  of 
her  own  impulse,  that  she  had  no  idea  of  ever  be- 
coming orthodox,  and  she  only  sought  this  cer- 
tificate to  protect  her  against  claims  that  were 


274        THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

apt  to  be  raised  by  the  orthodox  clergy.  Here- 
upon the  bishop  walked  back  into  his  private 
room,  and  there  presented  an  eikon,  or  holy  im- 
age of  the  Virgin  Mary,  telling  her  to  say  her 
prayers  to  it.  But  this  she  declined  to  do,  say- 
ing that  she  recognized  only  Jesus  Christ  as  in- 
termediary with  the  Almighty.  A  priest  then 
urged  her  to  take  it,  stating  that  if  she  did  so 
the  bishop  would  forgive  her  sins.  To  this  she 
answered  that  such  forgiveness  was  beyond  his 
powers,  because  he  was  only  a  man,  and  that 
even  their  pastor  never  pretended  to  as  much  as 
this,  for  he  only  pointed  them  to  God.  She  was 
then  told  that  she  was  a  great  sinner.  This  she 
admitted,  but  she  comforted  herself  by  the  reflec- 
tion that  the  publican  in  the  Bible  was  also  a  sin- 
ner and  received  forgiveness,  whereas  the  Phari- 
see did  not  fare  so  well ;  "  besides,"  said  she, 
naively,  "  the  orthodox  priests  know  nothing  of 
my  sins  except  that  my  father  left  the  Protestant 
Church  and  became  orthodox." 

She  did  not  mention,  by-the-way,  that  he  had 
allowed  himself  to  be  confirmed  while  in  a 
drunken  condition. 

They  then  told  her  that  the  czar  would  have 
her  punished  for  her  obstinacy,  but  this  she  an- 
swered cheerfully  by  saying  that  he  might  have 
her  life  but  not  her  faith.  Hereupon  the  Greek 
priests  ordered  her  out  of  the  room. 

All  this  seems  strangely  childish  and  mediaeval 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  275 

when  it  appears  in  print ;  but  as  I  listened  to  the 
recital  of  this  story  from  a  venerable  man  who 
had  held  high  ofifice  under  the  Russian  govern- 
ment, and  who,  though  used  to  ofificial  heart- 
lessness,  could  not  restrain  his  tears  as  he  de- 
tailed this  episode  in  order  to  make  me  appre- 
ciate the  state  of  existence  in  his  native  country, 
it  made  on  me  an  impression  which  I  cannot 
hope  to  reproduce  among  people  accustomed 
to  legal  safeguards  for  their  constitutional  lib- 
erty. 

When  the  reconverted  peasants  found  they 
could  do  nothing  by  beseeching  the  Greek  bishop, 
they  turned  to  the  officials  of  the  law  and  begged 
them  to  assist  in  getting  a  petition  to  the  czar 
on  this  subject;  but  these  authorities  would  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  matter,  remarking  that 
Church  affairs  was  no  business  of  theirs.  Even 
the  administrative  body  of  the  Lutheran  Church, 
the  consistory,  declined  to  receive  a  petition  on 
this  subject  signed  by  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
six  reconverted  peasants,  that  is  to  say,  peasants 
who  wished  to  return  to  the  Protestant  faith, 
which  they  had  left  under  circumstances  which 
no  one  familiar  with  the  matter  could  reasonably 
call  a  change  of  heart  or  mind.  The  reasons  for 
this  denial  of  comfort  by  the  heads  of  the  Prot- 
estant Church  organization  were  obvious  ;  for, 
as  we  have  seen,  they  exposed  themselves  to 
criminal  prosecution  by  taking  an  attitude  which 


2']b         THE    BORDIiRLAXD    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

brc)u^L;ht  tlicm  into  conflict  with  the  orthodox 
communion. 

In  the  midst  of  this  reh'gious  excitement  ap- 
peared the  czar's  order  of  July  26,  1885,  which 
brushed  aside  all  the  mitigating  measures  which 
Alexander  II.  had  conceived  and  published  se- 
cretly in  1865  (March  19th).  The  effect  of  this 
was  to  place  a  strict  watch  upon  every  Luther- 
an preacher,  to  see  that  he  kept  absolutely  clear 
of  the  reconverted  peasants.  It  also  made  it 
a  crime  for  the  children  of  mixed  marriages  to 
enter  a  Lutheran  church,  no  matter  what  the 
desires  of  one  or  both  parents  might  be.  We 
may  imagine  the  consternation  that  seized  upon 
the  Protestant  community  when  these  regula- 
tions were,  as  the  law  required,  read  from  the 
pulpit  of  every  church  throughout  the  Baltic 
provinces,  and  the  doors  of  the  Protestant  parson- 
ages were  thronged  with  panic-stricken  Luther- 
ans, who  begged  that  something  might  be  done 
for  them  to  rescue  at  least  their  children  from 
the  cruel  claims  of  the  orthodox  priesthood. 

Dr.  Brandt  was  regarded  as  one  of  the  most 
cautious  among  the  Lutheran  clergymen  in  the 
Baltic  provinces,  and  those  who  importuned  him 
he  advised  to  remain  quiet,  to  avoid  every  ap- 
pearance of  conflict  with  the  constituted  authori- 
ties, to  make  no  effort  towards  taking  the  com- 
munion by  stealth,  and  to  hope  for  a  change  in 
the   law.      He   believed,  as   most   people   did   at 


.  PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  277 

that  time,  that  the  czar  could  not  possibly 
mean  to  persecute  the  unorthodox,  and  was  per- 
haps .acting  in  ignorance  of  the  true  state  of 
things.  In  this  belief  he  hastened  to  St.  Peters- 
burg, and  had  an  interview  with  the  chairman 
of  the  Committee  on  Petitions,  for  the  purpose 
of  ascertaining  if  one  on  this  subject  would  be 
entertained.  The  official  expressed  himself  in  a 
hopeful  manner,  promised  to  support  the  Prot- 
estant cause  before  the  emperor,  and  suggested 
that  three  petitions  only  should  be  submitted, 
each  conceived  in  a  different  way,  by  three  dif- 
ferent members  of  the  community.  With  this 
cheering  message  the  reverend  pastor  hastened 
back  to  his  flock,  told  them  the  result  of  his 
mission,  and  selected  as  petitioners  three  recon- 
verted peasants  —  by  name,  Peter  Leitis,  John 
Ohsol,  and  Anne  Kursemneeks  —  who  straight- 
way sat  down  to  the  momentous  task  of  address- 
ing their  dread  sovereign,  the  present  czar.  It 
was  a  dangerous  thing  to  do,  and  they  knew  that 
by  this  act  they  were  exposing  themselves  to 
great  risk;  but  the  spirit  of  martyrs  was  in  them, 
and  they  subscribed  their  names  as  cheerfully  as 
did  the  great  Reformer  four  centuries  ago.  The 
Russian  school-teacher  was  then  called  for  the 
purpose  of  making  the  translation,  for  these  peas- 
ants are  not  Russian,  and  know  nothing  of  the 
Russian  language.  On  the  following  morning, 
the  19th  of  October,  this  momentous  dociunent 


278         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

left  the  little  village  of  Palzmar,  from  which  it 
had  to  journey  about  forty  miles  until  it  reached 
the  railway  that  joins  Riga  with  St.  Petersburg, 
for  Palzmar  is  about  half-way  between  Pskov  and 
Riga.  Many  were  the  fervent  prayers  offered  in 
that  obscure  little  village  of  the  Baltic  provinces 
as  the  days  passed  by,  and  the  answer  of  their 
gracious  sovereign  was  eagerly  looked  for.  These 
were  but  poor,  plain  people,  begging  on  their 
knees,  and  at  the  close  of  this  enlightened  cen- 
tury, nothing  more  dangerous  than  the  right  of 
worshipping  God  according  to  the  custom  of 
their  fathers,  and  of  baptizing  their  children  in 
the  faith  of  their  parents.  How  deep  the  feeling 
was  that  animated  these  simple  peasants  is  well 
illustrated  by  the  touching  petition  signed  by 
Anne  Kursemneeks  and  her  sister,  and  I  quote 
it  for  its  historic  value  : 

"  Lofty  and  most  Gracious  Master  and  Czar, — We  cast 
ourselves  at  the  feet  of  Your  Majesty  in  deepest  humility.  We 
pray  that  you  will  glance  at  us  in  our  unworthiness  and  allow  one 
beam  of  your  mercy  to  shine  also  upon  us.  Our  father,  in  an 
unholy  moment,  denied  his  faith  through  the  desire  of  earthly 
prosperity,  and  forgetting  the  welfare  of  his  soul  ;  this  act  he 
has  since  deeply  deplored  with  contrition  and  heart-felt  sorrow. 
We  pray  God  to  forgive  our  father  his  undue  haste,  and  believe 
it  to  be  all  the  more  our  duty  to  abide  in  the  faith  of  our  dear 
Lutheran  teaching,  as  only  in  this  faith  do  we  find  peace  for  our 
hearts  and  comfort  for  our  spirits. 

"But  the  Russian  priests  of  this  place  seek  to  force  us  with 
violence  into  the  Russian  Church,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  from 
our  babyhood  we  have  been,  in  every  respect,  memljers  of  the 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  279 

Lutheran  communion.  They  will  not  listen  to  the  cries  of  our 
sorrowful  hearts  ;  they  do  not  allow  themselves  to  be  moved  by 
our  prayers,  but,  on  the  contrary,  are  threatening  us  with  punish- 
ment because  we  will  not  break  from  our  Lutheran  faith.  They 
seek  by  this  means  to  rob  us  of  the  firm  foundation  on  which  our 
eternal  hope  is  based. 

"  Pity  us,  therefore,  lofty  Master  and  Czar,  and  permit  us,  we 
entreat  you,  to  remain  in  the  faith  of  our  fathers.  For,  if  Your 
Majesty  should  not  be  pleased  to  grant  this  prayer,  we  should  be 
forced  to  remain  outcast  and  miserable  indeed,  without  Church, 
without  instruction  in  the  Word  of  God,  without  the  Holy  Com- 
munion. For  we  have  covenanted  in  our  hearts  and  in  the  face 
of  God  that  we  will  never  surrender  our  faith.  God  has  heard 
this  prayer — hear  it,  oh,  hear  it  also.  Lofty  Master  ! 

"  Looking  to  your  almighty  lips  for  a  little  word  that  shall 
make  us  happy,  we  remain, 

"  Your  Majesty's  most  obedient  and  submissive  servants, 
"Anne  Kursemneeks, 
"  Sanne  Rudsit  (her  sister). 
"  Palzmar,  i8th  October,  1885." 

The  pastor  of  Palzmar,  Dr.  Brandt,  had  confi- 
dently hoped  from  the  benevolent  expressions 
of  the  St.  Petersburg  official  that  these  peti- 
tions would  come  before  the  czar  in  person,  and 
his  hopes  were  naturally  shared  by  the  commu- 
nity of  his  church.  But  he  little  knew  the  de- 
viousness  of  official  practice  in  the  capital.  As 
events  proved,  the  supplications  were  handed 
over  to  the  enemy,  that  is  to  .say,  the  authorities 
of  the  orthodox  church,  who  promptly  called  in 
the  assistance  of  the  notorious  Third  Section  of 
the  government — the  Political  Police — with  the 
result  that,  on  the  evening  of  December  3,  1885, 


28o         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

;i  i)()licc-officcr  arrived  in  Palzmar,  and  took  up 
his  quarters  with  the  Russian  priest.  On  the 
following  morning  commenced  a  series  of  in- 
quisitorial sessions,  with  a  view  to  drawing  Dr. 
Brandt  and  others  within  the  clutches  of  the 
law.  For  four  days  witnesses  were  examined, 
many  reconverts,  many  orthodox,  the  elders  of 
the  Lutheran  community,  the  teachers,  and  the 
local  officials. 

The  police  functionary  had  brought  a  non- 
commissioned officer  with  him  who  acted  as 
interpreter,  being  occasionally  relieved  by  the 
Russian  school -master  of  the  village.  In  the 
anteroom  were  stationed  the  two  Russians  who 
taught  in  the  school  of  the  Russian  priest,  and 
whose  business  it  was  to  see  that  none  of  the 
victims  were  allowed  to  communicate  one  with 
the  other.  These  two  were  particularly  active 
in  assisting  the  cause  of  the  inquisition  by 
threatening  with  prison  such  as  insisted  that 
they  intended  to  remain  Protestant.  Those  who 
came  out  from  the  inquisition  stated  that  the 
Russian  teacher  did  not  translate  properly,  and 
that  the  police  official  entered  upon  his  minutes 
only  the  testimony  which  was  prejudicial  to  the 
Protestant  pastor,  excluding  much  that  was  in 
his  favor. 

The  rapidity  with  which  this  drum-head  court- 
martial  w^as  carried  on,  particularly  on  account 
of  a  foreign  language  being  used,  and  a  manifest 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  2SI 

desire  to  confuse  the  statements  of  simple  peas- 
ants, produced  a  result  anything  but  that  usually 
associated  with  impartial  inquiry.  Two  of  the 
petitioners,  Ohsol  and  Leitis,  along  with  a  num- 
ber of  other  victims,  were  so  thoroughly  fright- 
ened by  the  threats  of  the  orthodox  inquisitors 
that  they  recanted  by  seeking  to  place  the  blame 
upon  their  courageous  pastor;  but  the  great  ma- 
jority, to  their  glory  be  it  recorded,  protested 
that  they  were  Protestants,  and  could  not  be 
otherwise  ;  that  they  had  become  so  of  their  own 
free  will,  without  any  persuasion  on  the  part  of 
their  pastor,  and  that  they  would  stand  by  him 
at  any  cost. 

Anne  Kursemneeks  set  an  example  that  makes 
her  name  worthy  to  rank  with  the  noblest,  if, 
under  that  head,  we  include  those  who  have 
given  their  life  rather  than  surrender  liberty  of 
conscience. 

The  brutal  tribunal  before  which  she  was 
dragged  asked  how  she  dared  presume  to  ad- 
dress so  exalted  a  being  as  the  czar !  To  this 
she  answered,  with  what  we  may  fairly  consider 
inspired  simplicity,  that  she  prayed  to  God  every 
day  of  the  year,  and  did  not  hesitate  to  ask  the 
Almighty  for  anything  that  she  desired.  For 
this  reason  she  had  considered  it  right  to  ask  the 
czar,  who  pretended  to  be  the  representative  of 
God  on  earth,  for  a  favor  which  he  alone  could 
trrant. 


262         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

She  was  asked  how  she  dared  to  sign  her  peti- 
tion as  "  most  obedient  serv^ant,"  when  all  the 
while  she  was  resisting  the  czar's  orders  by  hold- 
ing to  the  Lutheran  Church. 

She  answered  that  she  was  prepared  to  give  up 
everything  to  the  czar,  even  her  life — 

At  this  point  a  gendarme  interrupted  her, 
sneeringly,  and  said  that  nobody  cared  for  her 
life. 

"  But,"  said  she,  ignoring  the  brutal  interrup- 
tion, "  my  faith  I  cannot  give  away,  for  it  be- 
longs to  God." 

Soon  after  this  came  the  turn  of  the  pastor 
himself,  who  was  charged  by  this  orthodox  po- 
lice-court with  having  stirred  up  the  people  to 
petition  the  bishop  of  the  Greek  Church,  and, 
finally,  to  have  been  the  instigator  of  the  peti- 
tion to  the  czar.  It  is  hard  to  see  how  either  of 
these  acts  can  be  construed  into  a  criminal  of- 
fence, even  by  a  Russian.  This  charge  was  in- 
corporated in  a  paper  containing  thirteen  ques- 
tions, all  of  which  were  to  be  answered  in  eight 
days,  and  in  the  Russian  language. 

Dr.  Brandt  was  frank  in  meeting  every  accusa- 
tion, and  protested  emphatically  that  he  had 
recommended  the  petition  to  the  czar  only  be- 
cause it  was  the  only  way  open  to  them  in  their 
extremity  ;  that  those  who  sought  the  Lutheran 
Church  did  so  entirely  of  their  own  conviction, 
and    that    he   had  taken  no  other  share   in   the 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  283 

preparation  of  the  petitions  than  to  read  them 
over,  when  submitted  to  him,  for  the  purpose  of 
seeing  that  the  proper  forms  and  expressions 
were  observed.  On  the  result  of  these  petitions 
hung  the  fate  not  only  of  themselves,  but  per- 
haps of  all  other  Protestants  in  the  Baltic  prov- 
inces, and  it  could  not  be  expected  that  at  such 
a  time  he,  their  pastor,  should  stand  aloof,  when 
by  his  assistance  the  appeal  to  his  majesty 
might  possibly  gain  in  force  of  diction.  We  must 
bear  in  mind  that  the  little  village  of  Palzmar 
did  not  contain  many  scholars  capable  of  assist- 
ing peasants  in  the  preparation  of  so  courtly  a 
document. 

The  negroes  of  Hayti  have  a  proverb  which 
says  that  "  the  cockroach  is  usually  wrong  when 
arguing  with  a  chicken,"  an  aphorism  which  is 
elaborated  in  the  fable  of  the  wolf  and  the  lamb. 
Dr.  Brandt  proved  his  innocence  as  completely 
as  could  be  required  by  any  court  of  law,  but  un- 
fortunately his  argument  was  made  before  judges 
who  were  convened  not  to  deliberate,  but  to 
convict.  In  the  spring  of  1886,  about  three 
months  from  the  date  of  his  examination,  the 
czar  personally  ordered  this  Protestant  pastor  to 
be  dismissed  from  his  post,  and  to  be  banished  to 
Smolensk,  where  he  was  to  reside  under  police 
supervision.  Stripped  of  formal  language,  his 
condemnation  was — first  to  become  a  beggar, 
then  to  be  exposed  to  the  fanatical  persecution 


284  IHK    r.ORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

of  an  orthodox  community,  added  to  which  was 
the  arbitrary  tyranny  of  the  Russian  poHce,  who 
cut  off  his  correspondence,  and  broke  in  upon 
him  at  any  hour  of  the  day  or  night,  under  pre- 
tence of  satisfying  themselves  that  he  was  not 
harboring  disloyal  acquaintances. 

The  political  criminal  in  Russia,  as  is  well 
known,  is  exposed  to  suffering  compared  to 
which  the  life  of  a  convicted  burglar  is  joyful. 
The  burglar  is  permitted  to  employ  his  talents  in 
a  useful  way,  and  one  for  which  he  is,  to  a  large 
degree,  fitted.  The  college  professor,  the  artist, 
the  engineer,  the  physician,  last  of  all,  the  cler- 
gyman of  the  gospel,  who  is  sentenced  for  the 
crime  of  having  done  his  duty,  is  condemned  to 
a  life  that  starves  not  merely  his  belly  but  his 
mind.  The  government  is  charitable  in  theory, 
for  it  allows  him  seven  and  a  half  kopecks  (less 
than  two  pennies  of  English  money)  a  day.  My 
reader  naturally  asks  why  he  does  not  support 
himself  by  work.  The  Russian  police  has  an- 
swered the  question  by  forbidding  political  crim- 
inals to  engage  in  any  work  for  which  they  may 
be  presumed  to  be  particularly  fitted.  They  may 
not  give  instructions  in  anything,  not  even  the 
piano.  The  physician  may  not  practise  even  as 
a  volunteer  in  an  urgent  case,  when  no  Russian 
doctor  is  to  be  had.  A  deposed  clergyman  is 
condemned  to  a  punishment  more  severe  than 
can  be  readily  imagined,  namely,  idleness,  which 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  285 

gives  him  time  to  brood  upon  hi.s  starving  state, 
and  balance  from  day  to  day  the  rehitive  merits 
of  suicide  or  insanity.  The  exile  may  have  kind 
friends  disposed  to  send  him  money  from  time 
to  time,  but  he  has  also  a  postal  censor  who  does 
not  always  hand  over  the  money  that  comes  by 
mail. 

The  story  of  Pastor  Brandt  is  the  story  of 
many  another  worthy  man  in  the  Baltic  prov- 
inces. In  fact,  I  was  told  in  Russia  last  year 
that  eighty  Protestant  clergymen  were  then  un- 
der trial,  and  would  probably  be  sent  to  Sibe- 
ria. The  Rev.  Dr.  Brandt,  so  I  hear,  has  since 
been  allowed  to  leave  Smolensk,  owing  to  the 
intercession  of  powerful  friends,  perhaps ;  but 
more  likely  because  the  Russian  government  felt 
that  it  had  selected  an  unfortunate  example  for 
its  purpose,  one  which  might  excite  too  much 
sympathy  beyond  the  Russian  border.  He  was, 
however,  not  allowed  to  go  back  to  the  field  of 
his  Protestant  activity,  but  given  some  petty  ap- 
pointment in  the  interior  of  the  empire,  where 
he  could  no  longer  be  a  menace  to  orthodox 
propaganda. 

While  the  present  czar  was  making  out  the 
order  banishing  Dr.  Brandt,  he  made  another, 
striking  a  still  more  severe  blow  at  the  religion  of 
his  Baltic  provinces.  The  imperial  treasury  has 
given  liberally  t^  the  orthodox  church  for  the 
purpose   of  missionary  work  among  Protestants 


286         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

in  the  Baltic  provinces,  notably  for  the  building 
of  orthodox  churches,  parsonages,  schools,  and 
holy  shrines.  In  this  year,  however,  they  went 
a  step  further,  and  gave  the  orthodox  church  the 
right  to  condemn  and  appropriate  to  their  pur- 
poses any  Protestant  land  they  chose.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Protestant  Church  dares  not  take 
a  single  step  either  towards  building  or  repair- 
ing a  church  without  the  special  permission  of 
the  orthodox  bishop.  A  Protestant  congrega- 
tion recently  sought  to  build  a  church  extension, 
but  were  forbidden  to  do  so  by  the  orthodox 
bishop.  Then  they  petitioned  to  St.  Petersburg, 
but  the  minister  of  the  interior  answered  that 
they  must  abide  by  the  decision  of  the  orthodox 
bishop.  Hereupon  a  deputation  of  the  peas- 
antry appealed  to  the  governor,  receiving  from 
him,  however,  an  evasive  answer.  In  their  ex- 
tremity they  once  more  sought  St.  Petersburg, 
hoping  that,  at  the  feet  of  the  czar,  their  petition 
would  receive  attention.  It  did,  but  not  accord- 
ing to  their  hopes,  for  the  first  of  those  who 
signed  it  was  locked  up  in  the  damp  and  un- 
wholesome dungeons  of  the  famous  prison-for- 
tress named  after  Peter  and  Paul,  and  there  he  is 
to  this  day,  so  far  as  I  have  any  information. 

This  little  episode  is  well  capped  by  the  fact 
that,  soon  after  the  suppression  of  a  Protestant 
extension  here,  an  orthodox  clitirch  was  built,  al- 
though in  the  whole  community  there  were  but 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  287 

seven  Russian  communicants.  In  this  way,  by- 
forbidding  Protestant  congregations  to  build 
churches  for  themselves  and  holding  orthodox 
churches  near  at  hand,  empty  and  ready  for  ser- 
vice, the  czar  hopes  to  weaken  the  cause  of  the 
heretics  and  popularize  Panslavism. 

The  banishment  of  Dr.  Brandt  was  soon  fol- 
lowed by  the  dismissal  of  the  village  clerk,  or 
notary,  Carl  Semel,  and  the  imprisonment  of  the 
village  school- master  and  deacon,  Jacob  Abel; 
thus  fulfilling  the  threat  of  the  Russian  priest  of 
the  village,  who  said  that  he  regarded  these  three 
as  the  props  of  German  ways  of  thinking  in  that 
neighborhood,  and  that  he  would  soon  make  an 
end  of  them  all.  The  poor  deacon,  who  was  as 
innocent  as  his  pastor,  was  condemned  as  one 
whose  guilt  corresponded  with  that  of  the  Nihil- 
ists. He  was  described  as  "  a  politically  unsafe 
man,"  and  it  was  ordered  that  he  should  never 
again  be  appointed  as  school-teacher  or  as  church 
assistant  of  any  kind.  In  the  spring  of  1886  po- 
licemen appeared  at  his  door  and  took  him  away 
to  Riga,  where  he  was  locked  up  for  several  weeks 
as  a  "political  criminal"  in  the  common  prison; 
and  when  they  let  him  go,  in  August  of  that  year, 
it  was  to  send  him  out  in  the  world  little  better 
than  a  tramp  upon  the  highway;  and  this  was 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  was  proved  innocent 
of  all  charges  brought  against  him.  The  little 
village  of  Palzmar  has  now  two  Russian  police- 


288         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND     KAISER 

men  stationed  there,  who  assist  the  Russian  priest 
in  the  development  of  orthodoxy,  and  as  many 
arrests,  examinations,  and  dismissals  from  oi^ce 
have  occurred  since  the  banishment  of  Dr.  Brandt, 
it  is  safe  to  say  that  Russification  has  set  in  there 
with  a  vengeance. 

Through  the  kindness  of  a  trusted  Russian 
friend  I  have  been  able  to  procure  some  details 
in  regard  to  another  victim  of  Russian  persecu- 
tion. Dr.  W.  Harff,  who  was  banished,  treated  as 
a  Nihilist,  kept  under  police  supervision,  reduced 
to  beggary,  and  finally  saved  through  the  kind- 
ness of  German  friends,  who  secured  for  him  a 
small  post  in  Brunswick.  Dr  Harff  was  called  to 
the  pastorate  of  a  church  in  the  Baltic  provinces, 
on  the  river  Duna,  in  i88i  ;  it  was  a  Lithuanian 
community,  with  four  thousand  five  hundred 
Protestant  communicants,  of  whom  one  hundred 
were  Germans,  and  was  a  fairly  representative 
parish.  In  1885  he  lost  his  wife  at  the  birth  of 
his  youngest  son.  He  had  eight  children,  the 
oldest  of  whom  was  fifteen  years,  but  he  was  liv- 
ing comfortably,  according  to  the  circumstances 
of  the  neighborhood,  cultivating  his  little  farm 
and  garden,  and  thus  eking  out  the  income 
which  his  church  allowed  him.  To  use  this  cler- 
gyman's own  words:  ''In  the  fall  of  1887  fell 
the  two  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  Lutheran 
Church  in  our  neighboring  parish,  and  we  pro- 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  289 

posed  to  celebrate  the  occasion  suitably.  A  col- 
lection had  been  made  among  the  proprietors 
and  peasants  of  the  neighborhood  in  order  to 
restore  the  church  and  complete  the  tower.  It 
was  proposed  to  have  the  service  first  in  Lithua- 
nian and  then  in  the  German  language,  and,  in 
spite  of  protests  on  my  part,  I  was  selected  to 
hold  the  Lithuanian  service.  I  chose  my  text 
from  the  32d  chapter  of  Deuteronomy,  using  the 
words  in  the  song  of  Moses,  '  Ascribe  ye  great- 
ness unto  our  God  alone.' 

"  Mindful  of  the  great  sacrifices  which  had  been 
made  for  the  adorning  of  our  house  of  worship, 
and  the  great  joy  in  the  hearts  of  all  those  par- 
taking in  this  festive  ceremony,  I  referred,  in  the 
opening  words  of  my  discourse,  to  the  uncertain- 
ties of  the  present  time,  the  fact  that  the  schools 
had  been  taken  away  from  our  control,  that  the 
building  of  churches  had  come  to  depend  upon 
the  permission  of  the  Russian  bishop,  and  that 
we  must  prepare  to  suffer  persecution  on  account 
of  our  faith.  On  this  account  I  urged  we  should 
prize  all  the  more  the  happiness  we  enjoyed  at 
that  moment.  What  I  said  dealt  alone  with 
facts,  but  I  had  said  too  much  to  please  those 
whose  purpose  was  to  exterminate  this  land  and 
people. 

"  Immediately  after  the  service  I  learned  that 
secret  police  had  been  present  and  made  notes. 
There  followed  soon  secret  examinations  of  many 

'9 


290         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

communicants,  for  this  was  a  common  event  in 
those  days,  particuhirly  with  the  assistance  of 
fair  promises  or  terrible  threats.  Four  weeks 
afterwards  I  was  called  before  a  captain  of  po- 
lice, who  spoke  very  imperfect  German,  and  who 
had  as  his  assistant  a  lawyer's  clerk  in  a  striking 
uniform.  They  demanded  of  me  that  I  should 
explain  my  conduct  in  stirring  up  the  people 
against  the  recent  measures  of  the  government. 
This  it  was  against  my  instructions  to  do,  for, 
according  to  the  last  imperial  order,  no  examina 
tion  of  a  clergyman  should  take  place  unless  there 
were  present  some  one  to  represent  the  Church 
administration.  Accordingly  I  was  released,  al- 
though not  before  I  had  been  compelled  to  sign 
a  paper  engaging  myself  not  to  leave  the  parish — 
that  is,  not  to  escape  from  the  Russian  authority. 

"  For  a  whole  year  the  matter  lay  in  abeyance  ; 
apparently  I  was  free,  although  actually  under 
observance.  In  the  summer  of  1888  I  heard  that 
two  of  my  colleagues  had  been  severely  punished, 
but  I  still  tried  to  comfort  myself  with  the  reflec- 
tion that  they  could  not  possibly  construe  my 
conduct  as  criminal.  In  September  of  1888, 
however,  a  police  official  came  to  my  house  and 
announced  to  me  that  his  majesty,  on  the  rec- 
ommendation of  his  minister,  had  banished  me 
for  two  years,  and  in  ten  days  I  must  start." 

The  punishment  was  originally  to  have  been 
Siberia,  but  this  order  was  changed  for  deporta- 


PREACHING   THE   GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  291 

tion  to  an  interior  town  of  Russia.  His  colleague 
of  the  next  parish  being  exiled  at  the  same  time. 

Dr.  Harff  thanks  God,  from  paragraph  to  para- 
graph in  his  pathetic  account,  for  the  mercies 
strewn  in  his  path 'from  the  moment  of  receiving 
the  czar's  cruel  order.  His  many  children  were 
provided  for  by  charitable  neighbors,  and  one  of 
his  relatives  took  charge  of  his  little  farm  and 
garden  for  him.  In  order  to  avoid  the  demon- 
stration which  his  parishioners  would  have  made 
upon  his  departure,  he  drove  secretly  to  a  remote 
station  of  the  railway,  and  there,  under  the  eyes 
of  the  police,  boarded  the  train,  and  left  behind 
everything  that  was  near  and  dear  to  him. 

In  the  principal  town  of  the  province  to  which 
he  was  banished  he  had  first  to  report  himself 
to  the  commander  of  the  police,  who  proved  to 
be  a  kindly  and  cultivated  Russian,  who  did  ev- 
erything in  his  power  to  make  the  clergyman's 
lot  tolerable.  It  was  an  immense  relief  to  find 
that  they  would  be  allowed  to  live  where  they 
chose,  for  they  dreaded  an  order  forcing  them  to 
live  in  some  filthy  village,  far  from  every  inter- 
course with  their  fellow-men. 

Another  blessing  came  to  them  in  the  shape 
of  warm  friends,  who  received  them  into  their 
house,  and  kept  them  for  the  two  years  of  their 
exile.  The  case  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Harff  is,  there- 
fore, that  of  a  man  whose  lot  was  sweetened 
to  him  by  everything  that  could   possibly  hap- 


292         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

pen  in  his  favor,  it  is  not  lilcel}'  that  anotlier 
clergyman  would  liave  met  with  so  many  fortu- 
nate circumstances  while  serving  a  sentence  cal- 
culated to  crush  the  average  man  of  education. 
We  can  easily  imagine  him  to  have  come  under 
the  control  of  a  provincial  governor  who  would 
have  found  the  height  of  satisfaction  in  annoy- 
ing a  gentleman  ;  who  would  have  ordered  him 
to  some  pestiferous  swamp,  where  the  Russian 
priest  and  the  tax-gatherer  would  have  been  at 
once  his  jailers  and  companions.  It  is  not  to  be 
supposed  that  every  banished  clergyman  found 
himself  in  a  position  to  leave  eight  children 
among  good  friends,  or  to  have  his  little  estate 
well  managed  in  his  absence.  We  must  bear  in 
mind,  therefore,  that  the  case  of  Dr.  Harff  is  ex- 
ceptional. 

The  government,  in  the  case  of  this  gentleman, 
made  no  provision  whatever  for  his  support.  He 
was,  soon  after  his  audience  with  the  governor, 
called  before  the  police  and  put  through  a  severe 
catechism  in  regard  to  all  his  friends  and  rela- 
tives— -in  fact,  the  usual  questions  put  to  Nihilists 
when  it  is  sought  to  trace  all  their  connections 
and  correspondence.  The  object  of  this  cate- 
chism was,  of  course,  to  set  spies  upon  those 
with  whom  he  sought  to  hold  communication,  in 
the  hope  of  having  them  also  tangled  up  in  the 
police  mesh.  They  gave  him  also  the  rule  that 
was  to  govern  his  conduct.     In  a  word,  he  \\as 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  293 

to  live  thoroughly  retired  and  quiet,  to  avoid  re- 
ceiving company,  and  raise  his  voice  while  speak- 
ing, never  whisper.  The  police,  of  course,  had 
the  right  to  make  domiciliary  visits  by  night 
or  day,  and  all  the  letters  of  this  victim  were, 
naturally,  examined.  On  one  occasion  a  German 
friend  happened  to  pass  through  the  town,  where 
he  remained  only  twelve  hours.  Dr.  Harff  nat- 
urally took  pleasure  in  acting  as  his  guide  about 
the  place,  but  had  forgotten  that  political  crim- 
inals are  not  allowed  to  frequent  public  places. 
For  this  violation  of  the  rules  he  was  taken 
sharply  to  task  by  the  local  police,  who  had,  of 
course,  heard  that  a  German  stranger,  conse- 
quently a  suspicious  personage,  had  been  seen 
in  company  with  a  deposed  Lutheran  clergy- 
man. 

Early  in  1889  a  hard  blow  was  struck  at 
our  friend,  for  his  majesty  then  decreed  what 
amounted  to  an  additional  penalt}',  namely,  that 
he  should  never  again  be  allowed  to  hold  a  posi- 
tion in  his  own  country,  that  is  to  say,  in  the 
Baltic  provinces.  By  this  simple  decree  there 
was  nothing  for  this  political  exile  to  look  for- 
ward to  in  the  future  except  beggary  and  the 
lot  of  a  man  without  a  country.  The  saddest 
feature  of  these  two  years  was,  according  to  this 
minister  of  the  gospel,  the  separation  from  his 
family  at  Christmas-time  and  on  birthdays.  One 
must  have  lived   in  Germany  to  understand   the 


294         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

affection  with  which  those  anniversaries  are  there 
regarded. 

At  last  came  the  day  of  deHverance ;  Dr. 
Harff  was  called  to  the  police-station,  and  there 
told  that  he  was  free.  He  was  about  to  express 
his  joy,  when  the  officials  checked  him  by  order- 
ing him  to  sign  a  paper  in  which  he  covenanted 
never  to  appear  in  either  St.  Petersburg  or  Mos- 
cow or  the  provinces  in  which  they  lie.  So 
here  was  a  man  of  intellectual  training  forbid- 
den to  return  to  his  pulpit,  and  excluded  from 
the  two  chief  cities  of  the  empire,  where  he 
might  possibly  have  gained  a  livelihood  in  some 
occupation  for  which  he  was,  in  a  measure,  fit- 
ted. He  now  prepared  to  leave  the  town  where 
he  had  spent  his  years  of  unhappiness,  but  such 
is  the  tortuousness  of  Russian  officialism  that 
he  could  not  move  without  a  pass,  and  was 
forced  to  wait  a  full  four  weeks  before  this  doc- 
ument was  furnished  to  him.  With  a  heavy 
heart  he  at  last  reached  the  Baltic  hamlet,  where 
his  children  awaited  him,  and  heard  from  the 
lips  of  his  neighbors  of  the  many  who  had  died, 
and  the  still  greater  number  who  were  living  in 
daily  fear  of  the  police  and  the  Russian  priest. 
No  one  felt  safe ;  each  one  dreaded  fresh  steps  in 
the  direction  of  Russification,  which  meant  the 
extermination  of  everything  they  held  dear.  Two 
of  his  sisters  had  died  while  he  was  in  exile,  and 
he  began  to  feel  that  a  place  by  their  side  would 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  295 

be  the  pleasantest  rest  he  could  hope  for.  He 
had  no  means  of  support,  and  but  for  the  char- 
ity of  his  former  parishioners,  he  would  have 
been  reduced  to  pounding  stone  by  the  way- 
side. Under  the  political  system  of  Russia 
there  was  to  him  at  that  time  a  choice  of  only 
two  hopes :  the  one,  a  possible  appointment  in 
Germany  ;  the  other,  emigration  to  America.  In 
this  final  extremity,  God,  he  tells  us,  answered 
his  prayers ;  for,  in  Berlin,  some  good  friends 
managed  to  secure  for  him  a  small  church  with 
at  least  enough  salary  to  keep  him  alive  and 
allow  him  to  have  his  dear  children  about  him. 

If  we  may  look  at  such  a  time  for  a  silver  lin- 
ing to  the  dark  cloud  overhanging  the  Baltic 
provinces,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  persecution 
which  has  raged  in  Protestant  Russia  since  the 
accession  of  the  present  czar  is  likely  to  enlarge 
the  sympathy  of  these  people  for  their  fellow- 
victims  in  Poland,  where  the  Roman  Catholics 
have  for  many  years  suffered  quite  as  severely, 
to  say  nothing  of  many  Greek  Church  sectarians 
who  are  equally  the  objects  of  orthodox  malev- 
olence. Shortly  after  Mr.  Remington  and  I  left 
Russia,  a  friend  furnished  me  with*the  following 
particulars  illustrating  the  manner  in  which  the 
Greek  Church  was  carrying  on  its  Russifying 
campaign  in  Lithuania  and  Poland:  On  the  15th 
of  August,  1 892, .in  the  little  town  of  Slcdzianov, 


296         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

in  the  department  of  Grodno,  which  is  a  point 
somewhere  between  Riga  and  Warsaw,  a  large 
crowd  of  Roman  Catholics  and  Greek  Church 
sectarians  gathered  together  from  remote  parts 
of  the  neighborhood.  They  had  come  to  protest 
their  loyalty  to  the  faith  of  their  fathers.  There 
was  a  church  at  this  point,  but  the  pastor  had 
been  deposed,  and  it  had  been  closed  by  the  po- 
lice. In  some  mysterious  way  the  door  was 
found  open  when  the  people  arrived,  and  al- 
though they  had  no  priest  they  began  a  solemn 
service,  even  to  the  extent  of  taking  the  holy 
sacrament,  some  scraps  of  bread  having  been 
found  upon  the  altar,  evidently  left  there  through 
the  carelessness  of  the  officiating  deacon.  Hymns 
and  fervent  prayers  filled  the  church,  while  round 
about  as  many  as  twelve  thousand  worshippers 
gathered  who  were  unable  to  crowd  into  the  al- 
ready overfilled  building. 

The  Russian  bishop  soon  got  wind  of  this  act 
of  religious  insubordination,  and  ordered  his  rep- 
resentative immediately  to  the  spot,  with  whom 
went  the  governor,  a  police  committee  of  in- 
quiry, and  a  regiment  of  dragoons.  The  people 
were  ordered  out  of  the  church,  but  declined  to 
come.  They  were  then  told  that  the  building 
would  be  set  on  fire,  which  threat  was  partially 
carried  out  when  the  wretched  worshippers, 
exhausted  by  the  fumes  of  smoke,  issued  from 
their  sacred  building.     These  were  then  taken  in 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  297 

charge  by  the  cavahy  soldiers,  who  struck  them 
indiscriminately,  and  treated  them  as  common 
malefactors.  Those  whom  they  chose  to  se- 
lect as  ringleaders  were  then,  in  the  presence  of 
women  and  children,  mothers  and  sisters,  stripped 
and  flogged  till  the  blood  ran  down  their  backs, 
and  until  some  of  them,  at  least,  died  under  the 
lash.  In  order  that  the  effect  of  these  measures 
should  not  be  lost  upon  this  rebellious  commu- 
nity, the  soldiers  made  a  cordon  about  the  place 
so  that  all  should  be  witnesses  of  the  brutal  pun- 
ishment, and  take  warning  by  the  fate  of  their 
fellows.  When  enough  had  been  flogged  to 
satisfy  the  Russifying  committee  the  peasants 
were  dismissed,  and  soon  afterwards  the  inevita- 
ble police  investigation  commenced.  Many  of 
the  peasants  were  summoned  to  Bielsk,  where 
they  were  kept  locked  up  until  the  government 
had  made  up  its  mind  what  should  be  done  in 
regard  to  the  whole  matter. 

There  appears  to  have  been  considerable  sys- 
tem in  this  particular  government  movement,  for 
from  Sledzianov  the  committee  with  the  gov- 
ernor marched  off  to  a  neighboring  place  where 
there  was  an  equally  large  Roman  Catholic  and 
schismatic  community  whose  church  had  no 
pastor  or  priest.  In  order  to  be  quite  sure  that 
the  pious  rebels  in  Sledzianov  should  not  return 
to  their  wicked  ways,  they  quartered  the  dra- 
goon regiment  upon   them  for  three  weeks,  dur- 


298  IHE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

ini;'  which  time  tlie  peasants  liad  of  course  to 
furnish  all  that  was  needful  to  their  comfort, 
under  pain  of  having  their  houses  burned  down. 
Their  duty  it  was  to  patrol  the  neighborhood, 
and  to  harry  the  villages  in  which  were  any 
heretics,  and,  it  is  needless  to  add,  they  did 
pretty  much  what  they  chose,  as  long  as  their 
victims  were  enemies  of  the  Russian  priest. 
The  poor  people  who  are  being  ruined  by  this 
system  of  persecution  wonder  that  the  czar  al- 
lows it,  because,  as  they  say,  God  is  obviously 
on  their  side,  for  he  has  cursed  the  Russians 
first  with  famine,  and  next  with  cholera  ;  whereas 
in  Poland,  Lithuania,  and  the  Baltic  provinces, 
the  harvest  has  been  excellent,  and  the  public 
health  equally  so. 

The  Russifying  committee  found  a  vigorous 
resistance  at  the  next  church  also,  but  this  was 
speedily  overcome  by  the  strong  force  of  police 
which  was  placed  at  their  disposal. 

The  police  committee  next  marched  upon  a 
place  called  Semyatitch,  all  in  the  same  general 
neighborhood,  where  a  Roman  Catholic  church 
stood  which  had  been  closed  by  order  of  the 
orthodox  authorities  as  recently  as  the  year 
1892.  The  priest  had  been  led  away  by  the 
police,  his  house  confiscated,  all  his  devotional 
books  likewise  done  away  with,  and  the  very 
church  locked  and  sealed.  As  in  Sledzianov, 
liowever,   under   the   same   impulse,   the   church 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  299 

had  been  opened  again  early  in  the  morning, 
and  the  people  united  there  in  saying  their 
prayers  and  doing  other  acts  of  devotion.  The 
crowd  here  was  as  great  as  elsewhere,  for  the 
neighborhood  soon  got  wind  of  what  had  hap- 
pened ;  but  here,  as  elsewhere  along  the  western 
frontier  of  Russia,  there  is  always  a  convenient 
regiment  of  cavalry,  and  this  body  was  called 
into  requisition  by  the  police.  The  soldiers 
were  ordered  to  clear  the  church,  but  the  un- 
armed peasantry  resisted  by  locking  arms  around 
the  church-yard  and  offering  their  helpless  bod- 
ies as  a  resisting  wall  to  the  sabres  of  their  Rus- 
sian conquerors.  The  soldiers  attacked  these 
people  with  cold  steel,  and  were  answered  by  a 
few  stones  from  a  distance.  One  blow  led  to 
another,  and  soon  about  the  sacred  premises  was 
a  hand-to-hand  battle,  armed  men  with  helpless 
peasants — a  conflict  so  unequal  as  to  soon  ter- 
minate. Here,  as  in  Sledzianov,  when  the  power 
of  the  soldiers  had  been  asserted,  a  number  of 
peasants  wag.  selected,  and  in  the  presence  of 
their  relatives  stripped  and  flogged  with  Cossack 
whips  until  the  police  judged  that  their  spirit 
was  sufficiently  crushed  to  render  them  in  future 
submissive  and  loyal. 

The  police  made  a  strong  effort  to  arrest  those 
who  were  suspected  of  opening  the  doors  of  the 
church.  Whether  they  got  the  right  ones  or  not 
is  not  known,  but  t\}cy  have  arrested  some,  and 


300         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

these  will  probably  never  see  their  home  or  any 
of  their  friends  again,  excepting  in  Siberia. 

Unfortunately  for  the  cause  of  liberty,  the 
Germans  of  the  Baltic  provinces,  the  Lithuani- 
ans, and  the  Poles  hate  one  another  almost  as 
bitterly  as  each,  individually,  dreads  the  process 
of  Russification.  They  are  carefully  isolated 
one  from  the  other  by  a  system  of  press  censor- 
ship and  police  quarantine,  so  that  co-opera- 
tion between  Warsaw,  Kovno,  and  Riga  is  almost 
physically  impossible,  even  assuming  that  the 
three  races  here  represented  could  be  brought  to 
meree  their  religious  differences  for  the  sake  of 
taking  common  action  against  the  all-absorbing 
orthodoxy.  These  three  suffering  parties  are 
separated  not  merely  by  race  and  religion,  but, 
beyond  that,  are  so  completely  overrun  by  of- 
ficials, police,  and  soldiers,  that  not  a  letter  can 
be  sent,  not  a  meeting  held,  not  a  newspaper 
put  into  type,  without  imminent  risk  of  impris- 
onment or  banishment.  Two  friends  I  have  in 
Russia  dare  not  send  me  the  most^nnocent  com- 
munications for  fear  of  being  therefor  called  to 
account  by  the  secret  police,  and  when  by  good- 
fortune  I  do  hear  anything  from  Russia,  I  notice 
that  the  letter  is  always  posted  in  Germany, 
having  been  first  taken  across  the  frontier  by 
safe  hands. 

One  would  suppose  that  the  persecution  now 
going  on  in   Russia  would   rouse  the   people  of 


PREACHING   THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  30 1 

Germany — Protestants  and  Catholics  alike — to 
such  a  storm  of  indignation  as  would  result  in 
mass-meetings  and  demonstrations.  Yet  Ger- 
mans, so  far,  have  been  rather  apathetic,  owing 
to  the  difficulty  of  securing  reliable  informa- 
tion from  their  fellow-countrymen  in  Russia,  but 
principally  from  the  policy  of  Prince  Bismarck, 
who  when  in  power  never  failed  to  show  his 
subserviency  to  Russia,  and  indifference  to  the 
fate  of  his  coreligionists  on  the  Baltic.  Of  the 
Poles  he  never  spoke  without  contempt,  and  con- 
sidered that  the  sooner  they  were  extinguished 
the  better  for  all  concerned. 

Last  summer  a  German  official  who  had  been 
for  many  years  stationed  on  the  Vistula,  at  the 
fortress  of  Thorn,  close  to  the  Polish  frontier, 
told  me  that  Bismarck  when  in  power  always 
seconded  the  Russian  police  when  they  claimed 
any  fugitives  from  Russian  so-called  justice. 
Many  of  these  poor  political  refugees,  anticipa- 
ting arrest,  floated  down  the  Vistula  from  War- 
saw, and  imagined  that  in  a  constitutional  coun- 
try like  Germany  they  would  find  at  least  a  fair 
trial.  liismarck,  however,  as  foreign  minister, 
seizetl  such  poor  wretches  on  the  ground  that 
they  were  dangerous  to  the  peace  of  Germany, 
and  must  be  expelled.  Of  course  he  might  have 
expelled  them  on  the  French,  Swiss,  Dutch,  or 
Danish  frontiers,  but  with  a  casuistry  cruel  in 
its  refinement  he  ordered  them  to  be  taken  to 


302         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

tlic  Russian  frontier,  where  the  czar's  pohce  re- 
ceived them.  Under  the  present  government  of 
Caprivi  there  has  been  no  disposition  manifested 
of  pursuing  this  brutal  poHcy,  and  it  is  to  be 
hoped  that  the  annals  of  German  administration 
will  never  again  be  stained  by  measures  so  medi- 
.neval  and  heartless  as  those  which  were  too  com- 
mon in  the  days  of  the  Iron  Chancellor. 

To  explain  Bismarck's  hatred  of  the  Poles,  one 
must  understand  his  dread  of  revolution,  for  he 
cannot  imagine  a  people  governed  otherwise 
than  by  violence.  To  him  there  is  no  man  so 
dangerous  as  one  who  tl^Snks  for  himself,  or  who 
organizes  to  redress  a  grievance.  In  the  early 
part  of  November,  1892,  Bismarck  said  of  him- 
self that  he  once  strongly  urged  upon  the  em- 
perors of  both  Germany  and  Russia  to  hold  to- 
gether in  a  firm  alliance  because  "in  the  interests 
of  monarchy  they  had  more  to  gain  in  combat- 
ing revolution  than  by  separating  for  purposes 
of  conquest."  Bismarck  is  one  of  those  great 
men  who  forget  nothing  and  learn  nothing.  He 
remembers  that  Prussia  joined  with  Russia  in 
partitioning  Poland  and  in  suppressing  the  strug- 
gles for  liberty  in  that  country.  He  saw  that 
through  overwhelming  numbers  successive  re- 
bellions were  put  down,  and  he  fancied  that 
peace  secured  at  such  a  price  could  be  enduring. 
He  has  not  learned  the  secret  of  conservatism  in 
a   people   as   it   exists   in   the    United   States,  in 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEL    IN    RUSSIA  303 

Mngland,  in  Scandinavia,  in  Australia,  Canada, 
and  other  free  countries.  In  his  own  country 
he  had  been  twenty  years  fighting  Socialism  by 
means  of  suppression,  and  yet  was  too  blind  to 
see  that  these  brutal  measures  only  made  Social- 
ism more  dangerous.  He  does  not  seem  to  see 
the  enormous  sacrifices  which  the  Poles  have 
made  for  the  last  hundred  years  for  their  inde- 
pendence, and,  above  all,  their  liberty  of  con- 
science. In  the  interview  from  which  I  quote 
he  says  :  "  The  enemies  of  peace  with  Germany 
are,  in  Russia,  only  the  Jews,  and  particularly  the 
Poles.  The  Poles  are  cleverer,  more  cultivated, 
and  have  more  tact  than  the  Russians;  they  are 
masters  of  conspiracy  and  deception.  .  .  .  They 
pretend  to  be  friendly  with  us  at  present,  be- 
cause they  wish  us  to  conquer  Russia  and  restore 
to  them  their  country,"  and  so  on. 

I"or  thirty  years  Bismarck  has  carefully  poi- 
soned the  mind  of  Germans  against  Poland  by 
pretending  that  the  people  of  that  country  were 
conspiring  all  the  time  against  monarchy  and 
against  society.  Had  the  press  of  Germany  been 
free  during  all  these  years,  there  would  have 
been  papers  prepared  to  refute  indignantly  this 
charge  against  a  noble  people;  but  in  the  absence 
of  contradiction,  stories  against  Poland  were  pub- 
lished over  and  over  again,  until  the  present  gen- 
eration has  almost  as  imperfect  an  idea  of  that 
country  as  P'rance  has  of  Germany.     Prussians 


304         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

have  fought  three  wars  against  Poland  \\ithin 
a  hundred  years,  and  in  war  time,  needless  to 
say,  the  conquering  army  does  not  see  the  most 
lovely  qualities  among  the  people  whose  coun- 
try they  are  invading.  The  Protestant  Lithuani- 
ans and  Germans  of  the  Baltic  provinces  are  only 
now  beginning  to  feel  sympathy  for  Poland  ; 
now  that  both  are  so  miserable  that  they  have 
memory  for  nothing  but  their  common  wrongs. 
In  the  days  of  their  prosperity  the  Baltic  Ger- 
mans were  very  loyal  to  the  czar,  and  sternly 
set  their  face  against  Polish  rebellion.  Their 
liberties  were  so  well  founded,  they  thought,  and 
their  prosperity  so  great,  that  they  dared  not 
jeopardize  the  one  or  the  other  by  appearing  to 
feel  sympathy  for  the  czar's  enemies.  Little  did 
they  dream,  in  the  reign  of  Alexander  IL,  that 
in  a  few  short  years  Russian  priests  would  be 
forbidding  the  erection  of  Protestant  chapels, 
imprisoning  their  pastors  and  school-teachers, 
and  sending  to  jail  their  most  moderate  and  cul- 
tivated men,  for  simply  protesting  against  the  . 
violation  of  their  constitution.  The  Russian  czar 
is  bent  upon  war,  or  at  least  is  pursuing  a  pol- 
icy which  can  only  end  with  this  result — either 
civil  war  or  foreign,  perhaps  both.  It  may  seem 
strange  that  God  permits  in  our  day  religious 
persecution  that  would  have  disgraced  the  age 
of  Philip  II.  or  Bloody  Mary  ;  but  perhaps  it  is 
onlv  through  such  an  ordeal  as  this  that  the  vie- 


PREACHING    THE    GOSPEf.    IN    RUSSIA  305 

tims  who  are  now  groaning  under  the  Russian 
yoke  can  be  brought  to  recognize  the  duties 
which  one  Christian  owes  to  another,  to  forget  the 
many  savage  disputes  that  have  marred  the  rela- 
tions of  Poles  and  Germans,  and  to  merge  minor 
religious  differences  in  the  great  struggle  for 
constitutional  liberty.  The  great  lesson  of  toler- 
ance is  sadly  needed  in  Poland  and  in  the  Baltic 
provinces  as  well  as  in  St.  Petersburg  ;  and  it 
may  be  in  the  scheme  of  the  Almighty  to  bring 
about  a  better  feeling  between  the  two  great 
branches  of  Christians  by  a  co-operation  of 
Catholics  and  Protestants,  standing  shoulder  to 
shoulder  in  Christian  brotherhood,  over  against  a 
Church  whose  high-priest  is  the  czar,  and  whose 
purpose  is  to  make  of  Europe  a  Russian  prov- 
ince. 


RUSSIFICATION 

THE  POLISH  AND  THE  GERMAN  CHAPTER 

AT  h;ilf-past  four  of  a  chilly,  misty  morning,  on 
the  banks  of  the  muddy  Memel,  without 
breakfast — is  it  strange  that  we  should  have  been 
cross?  We  were  in  Kovno,  the  much-bespied 
Russian  fortress ;  Remington  *  was  making  a 
surreptitious  sketch  at  the  head  of  the  long 
bridge  of  boats,  over  which  Napoleon's  army 
must  have  crossed  in  June  of  i8i2.  In  fact,  we 
thought  we  could  distinguish  the  very  hill  on 
which  the  conqueror  stood  when,  in  person,  he 
directed  the  operations  of  his  great  army.  There 
was  nothing  very  wrong  in  sketching  a  hill  as- 
sociated with  the  presence  of  Napoleon  I.,  but 
I  happened  to  know  that,  in  a  semicircle  to  the 
south  of  where  we  stood,  on  the  opposite  side 
of  this  muddy  stream,  the  czar  was  putting  fin- 
ishing touches  to  a  chain  of  seven  forts,  the 
line  of  which  is  about  three  miles  distant  from 
the  centre  of  the  town.  I  happened  also  to  know 
that,   in  the  previous  week,  two   Germans   had 

*  Frederic  Remington,  the  artist. 


RUSSIFICATION  307 

been  arrested  for  inadvertently  trespassing  on 
fortress  ground,  and  that  Russians  make  scant 
distinctions  between  accident  and  design  in  the 
case  of  people  caught  wandering  about  powder- 
magazines  and  embrasures.  Under  the  circum- 
stances, neither  of  us  had  the  slightest  desire  to 
push  our  investigations  beyond  reasonable  limits 
— we  both  longed  to  get  out  of  Russia  as  quickly 
as  possible. 

Kovno  has  a  monument  on  which  is  written  : 
"  Russia  was  invaded  in  1812  by  an  army  of  700,- 
000  men.  That  army  went  back  with  70,000." 
The  preparations  now  making  to  receive  another 
enemy  indicate  that  Russia  does  not  mean  Ger- 
mans or  Austrians  to  enter  beyond  this  river. 
In  1812  Napoleon  advanced  until  mud  and  hun- 
ger compelled  him  to  give  up.  This  time  Russia 
means  to  meet  her  enemy  on  a  line  of  forts 
stretching  from  the  Baltic  to  the  Black  Sea. 
They  may  be  roughly  outlined  as  commencing  at 
Riga  and  ending  at  the  mouth  of  the  Danube. 
Those  who  imagine  that  Russia  will  once  more 
retire  and  draw  her  enemy  into  the  interior  are 
vastly  mistaken,  for  in  that  case  why  spend 
enormous  sums  upon  fortresses  on  the  western 
frontier  ?     Why  make  of  Kovno  another  Mctz  ? 

As  I  rolled  this  in  my  mind,  I  lifted  from  my 
shoulder  the  masts  and  sails  of  my  canoe,  and 
tossed  the  clumsy  load  upon  what  I  took  to  be  a 
pile   of  corn   sacks  covered  with   tarpaulin.     To 


3o8         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

my  amazement  a  short,  sharp  scream  came  from 
beneath  the  canvas — a  woman's  voice,  I  thought. 
At  such  an  hour  and  under  such  circumstances 
my  curiosity  was  roused,  particularly  as  the 
creature  beneath  did  not  stir,  and  the  sound  was 
not  repeated.  Not  a  soul,  not  even  a  police- 
man, was  about ;  so  I  raised  a  corner  of  the  cov- 
ering, and  discovered  the  crouching  form  of  a 
frightened  mother,  hugging  a  little  child  to  her 
breast.  Remington  was  absorbed  in  his  illegiti- 
mate thumb-nail  work,  and  apparently  had  not 
noticed  the  episode.  I  was  about  apolgizing  for 
my  clumsiness,  when  the  little  mother,  in  an  agi- 
tated manner,  said  : 

"  Indeed,  sir,  I  have  done  nothing.  I  have  my 
ticket.     I  am  waiting  for  my  uncle." 

It  was  pitiful  to  notice  her  distress  of  manner, 
the  evidence  of  having  been  hunted  by  human 
blood-hounds.  Of  course  I  told  her  immediately 
that  she  quite  mistook  my  calling.  I  was  not  a 
detective— merely  an  American  traveller  trying 
to  get  out  of  the  country  with  the  least  possible 
delay.  The  hunted  look  did  not  disappear,  for 
she  was  still  in  Russia — in  fact,  in  the  military 
department  of  Vilna,  amid  a  garrison  of  100,000 
men.  But  she  seemed  to  feel  that  I,  at  least, 
would  do  her  no  harm.  She  was  at  first  shy  of 
Remington,  but  in  time  I  made  her  believe  that 
he,  too,  feared  a  howling  Apache  less  than  he  did 
the  most  shrinking  of  women. 


RI/SSIFICATION  309 

We  were  friends  in  misery,  and,  as  I  mention  no 
names,  I  may  add  that  she  was  pretty  in  spite  of 
tlie  bedraggled  appearance  of  her  hair  and  skirts. 

"  But  what  in  the  world  brings  you  to  spend 
the  night  in  the  mud  on  the  river-bank  under  a 
dirty  tarpaulin  ?"  I  asked. 

This  question  made  her  again  shy  ;  but  she 
was  by  this  time  partaking  of  my  bread  and  sau- 
sage, and  soon  concluded  to  take  me  into  her 
confidence. 

"  My  husband,"  said  she,  "is  off  in  the  town 
with  the  Jews.  He  has  no  pass.  He  is  going  to 
cross  the  frontier  to-night." 

'■'Yes,  but  what  about  you  and  the  little 
one?" 

"  Oh !  I  am  waiting  for  some  one — there  is  a 
raft  coming  down  the  river,  the  captain  of  which 
has  promised  to  take  me  on  board  and  carry  me 
to  Tilsit.  He  is  an  honest  man — a  German  ;  I 
must  not  go  with  my  husband  across  the  frontier 
— I  could  not  help  him,  and  might  lose  my 
baby  " — with  which  words  she  kissed  the  little 
one,  sleeping  sweetly  at  her  breast. 

Of  course  by  this  time  I  was  wrought  up  to  a 
high  fever  of  romantic  anticipation,  and  wished 
to  ask  all  manner  of  questions,  but  just  then  the 
expected  raft  hove  in  sight  through  the  river 
mist ;  almost  simultaneously  a  long  and  narrow 
dug-out  canoe  ran  its  nose  ashore  at  our  feet ; 
a  strong,  bearded  man  plied  a  stern-paddle,  and 


3IO  THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

in  a  few  seconds  mother  and  child  disappeared 
out  upon  the  swift  stream  of  the  muddy  river. 

It  was  kicky  for  the  two  that  they  disappeared 
as  they  did,  for  the  morning  was  wearing  along 
rapidly,  and  soon  the  bridge  of  boats  became 
animated  with  peasants  and  also  soldiers.  Uni- 
forms seemed  to  spring  from  every  street  open- 
ing, and  we  began  to  feel  as  though  Kovno  was 
little  more  than  a  very  dirty  barrack.  I  should 
not,  however,  forget  to  mention  the  Jews,  who 
also  wear  uniforms,  by-the-way,  and  who  number 
25,000  out  of  a  total  population  of  barely  50,000. 

Soon,  however,  a  little  flat-bottomed  Russian 
steamer  paddled  away  with  us  down  the  river, 
and  I  watched  my  fellow -passengers  narrowly. 
Of  course  there  were  several  uniforms,  many 
Jews  and  peasants,  and  a  few  whom  I  could  not 
quite  make  out.  Among  these  an  intelligent- 
looking  man  of  about  thirty  happened  to  sit  near 
me,  as  I  sipped  a  cup  of  coffee,  and  from  him  I 
sought  information.  His  answers  were  polite, 
his  manner  rather  reserved  —  until,  by  an  acci- 
dent, he  gathered  that  I  was  an  American,  when 
he  admitted  that  he  was  a  Pole,  and  commenced 
to  talk  freely.  He  was  not,  however,  quite  sure 
of  me  until  I  mentioned  one  or  two  of  my  friends 
at  Warsaw,  whom  he  regarded  as  leaders  of  his 
national  party.  Then  he  confessed  to  me  that 
he  was  trying  to  get  into  Germany  that  night. 

"  Then,"  said  I,  "  I  have  the  honor  of  knowing 


RUSSIFICATION  311 

your  wife  !"  With  which,  to  his  great  relief,  I  re- 
lated her  successful  departure  from  the  Kovno 
river-bank,  in  charge  of  the  black-bearded  boat- 
man. "  But  why  do  you  smuggle  yourself  out 
of  the  country?"  I  asked.  "Could  you  not  have 
accompanied  your  wife?" 

He  smiled  bitterly,  and  answered  : 

"  She  can  be  smuggled  more  easily  than  I  can, 
for  she  is  a  woman.  I  may  escape  to-night,  if 
the  police  are  stupid  enough,  but  at  any  point 
of  this  river  I  am  liable  to  seizure  by  any  official 
clever  enough  to  recognize  me." 

"You  don't  look  like  a  criminal,"  said  I. 

"  No,  but  worse  than  that,  I  am  a  Pole,  and 
my  country  is  being  '  Russified.'  " 

I  had  nothing  to  say  to  this. 

He  paused  a  moment,  passed  his  hand  across 
his  eyes  wearily,  looked  at  me  fixedly,  and  then 
commenced  again : 

"  My  father,  along  with  every  respectable  man 
in  the  country,  fought  for  Polish  independence 
in  1863.  We  gave  the  Russians  a  hard  fight  for 
it,  but  finally,  with  the  assistance  of  Prussia  and 
Bismarck,  they  got  us  down  and  began  to  kick 
the  life  out  of  us.  My  father  was  killed  by  a 
Cossack — a  handsome  young  man  he  was.  Of 
course  I  was  only  a  baby  then,  but  my  moth- 
er brought  me  up  to  honor  his  memory  and 
be  loyal  to  my  country,  my  religion,  and  my 
mother-tongue. 


312  THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

"  Well,  our  estates  were  confiscated  ;  my  moth- 
er struggled  along  for  a  time  upon  the  little  ready 
money  she  had  saved,  but  died  of  a  broken  heart 
in  a  few  years.  I  was  dismissed  from  the  sci- 
entific school  in  Warsaw  because  some  Russian 
sneak  told  the  teacher  that  I  talked  Polish  in 
forbidden  hours.  Of  course  I  should  have  been 
more  careful,  but  they  probably  would  have  re- 
fused me  a  degree  anyhow,  as  any  excuse  is  found 
good  enough  when  the  object  is  to  turn  out  a 
Pole  and  put  in  a  Russian — at  least,  in  Warsaw. 

"  My  dismissal  made  it  impossible  for  me  to 
complete  my  education  anywhere  in  Russia, 
and  I  had  not  the  means  to  go  abroad  for  the 
purpose.  Money  I  had  very  little,  so  I  became 
a  machinist,  and  by  keeping  my  mouth  shut 
finally  secured  a  pretty  good  position  in  one  of 
the  mills  at  Lodz. 

"  Do  you  know  much  about  Lodz?"  he  asked. 

I  had  to  admit  that  Lodz  had  been  to  me  but 
the  name  of  a  manufacturing  town  of  Poland, 
and  that  I  had  never  been  nearer  to  it  than 
Skernevitze. 

"  Well,"  said  he,  "  it  has  about  120,000  people, 
nearly  all  of  whom  work  in  the  factories  there. 
It  lies  between  Warsaw  and  the  German  frontier, 
and  in  the  track  of  an  army  invading  from  the 
west.  Although  so  important  a  centre  of  man- 
ufacture, the  government  does  not  connect  it 
with  the  railway  system  of  Europe,  but  allows  it 


RUSSIFICATION  313 

to  trade  only  to  the  eastward — that  is  what  we 
call  Russian  protection.  You  may  measure  the 
importance  of  Lodz  when  I  tell  you  that  the 
woollen  -  mill  in  which  I  was  a  superintendent 
employed  8000  hands! 

"  Well,  the  police  have  always  kept  a  sharp 
eye  on  Lodz  because  it  is  so  close  to  the  frontier, 
and  because  it  contains  so  many  intelliijent  work- 
men of  Polish  and  German  antecedents.  It  was 
felt  that,  in  the  event  of  war,  the  town  would 
organize  a  welcome  to  the  German  emperor,  and 
be  an  important  base  for  the  manufacture  of 
contraband  material.  The  Russian  governor  at 
Warsaw,  General  Gurko,  did  everything  a  brutal 
soldier  could  think  of,  therefore,  to  discourage 
any  but  orthodox  Russian  appointments  in  our 
neighborhood.  The  police  had  most  ample  pow- 
ers to  arrest  and  transport  any  one  suspected  of 
unorthodtjx  views — in  fact,  to-day  not  a  man  can 
get  an  appointment  or  promotion  of  any  kind 
without  police  permission.  By  dint  of  persist- 
ent and  judicious  bribing,  we  had  jogged  along 
well  enough;  but  on  the  ist  of  May  [1892]  the 
operatives  had  arranged  for  a  labor-day  celebra- 
tion. That  was  unfortunate,  particularly  as  they 
concluded  to  strike  on  the  2d  for  a  day's  work  of 
ten  hours." 

I  objected  that  I  could  see  no  reason  why  men 
should  not  strike  for  any  wages  they  pleased,  so 
long  as  they  did  not  violate  the  law. 


314        THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

"  You  misunderstand  me,"  rejoined  my  Polish 
companion  ;  "  I  was  thinking  of  the  mihtary  sit- 
uation. Lodz,  though  a  mere  industrial  town, 
has  for  its  protection  a  brigade  of  field  artillery, 
a  battery  of  horse  artillery,  a  regiment  of  in- 
fantry ;  Cossacks  and  dragoons  to  an  indefi- 
nite extent,  within  a  few  hours'  ride,  and  is  shut 
up  in  a  military  department  that  keeps  130,000 
men  under  arms  ready  to  march  at  short  notice. 
General  Gurko  enjoys  shooting  Poles  and  Turks 
equally,  and  to  give  him  any  excuse  for  sending 
troops  to  Lodz  was  unfortunate." 

"But  why  have  I  heard  nothing  of  all  this?" 
asked  L 

"  Because  General  Gurko  does  not  edit  news- 
papers for  the  benefit  of  the  unorthodox,"  an- 
swered he,  smiling.  "  No  Polish  or  Russian  pa- 
per has  ventured  to  discuss  the  matter,  and  if 
you  ever  see  anything  about  it,  you  may  be  sure 
that  it  was  smuggled  across  the  frontier  by  the 
Jews.  But,  as  I  was  saying,  the  strike  com- 
menced on  the  2d  of  May.  The  men  behaved 
well  enough,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  mat- 
ter would  be  amicably  arranged  by  a  fair  compro- 
mise. But  General  Gurko  had  evidently  other 
ideas,  and  telegraphed  from  Warsaw  that  the 
employers  should  not  yield  anything.  He  then 
marched  a  column  of  Cossacks  upon  the  place, 
and  gave  the  military  authorities  telegraphic 
orders  not  to  be  afraid  of  usins  ball-cartridses. 


RUSSIFICATION  315 

These  items  of  intelligence  sonnehow  or  other 
leaked  out  among  the  men,  and  converted  what 
was  originally  but  a  domestic  difference  into  a  war 
against  the  common  enemy.  Germans  and  Poles 
were  smarting  under  the  indignities  they  had 
suffered  at  Russian  hands ;  the  troops  quartered 
about  them  were  not  Polish  —  on  the  contrary, 
they  were  men  brought  from  Russian  orthodox 
neighborhoods,  and  animated  with  fanatical  ha- 
tred against  the  people  among  whom  they  were 
quartered. 

"  You  ask,  perhaps,  where  are  our  brothers, 
now  serving  in  the  czar's  army?  Anywhere  but 
in  Poland.  Some  along  the  Volga,  some  in  the 
Caucasus,  some  in  Turkestan  —  but  always  far 
away,  beyond  the  cry  of  their  wretched  fellow- 
countrymen. 

"The  strike  soon  became  serious,  and  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  government  intended  to  provoke 
the  trouble  that  ensued.  They  employed  police 
agents  who  pretended  to  be  working-men,  and 
sought  to  inflame  the  mob  against  the  Jews; 
but  this  did  not  work  ;  they  were  prepared  for  it. 
Afterwards,  by  a  strange  accident,  the  inmates 
of  an  adjacent  penal  colony  were  turned  loose  in 
the  town  and  commenced  plundering.  Mean- 
time the  popular  feeling  against  the  troops  grew 
to  such  a  pitch  that,  when  a  squadron  of  Cos- 
sacks was  ordered  to  charge,  they  were  met  by 
desperate  civilians  armed  with  nothing  more  ef- 


3l6  IHli    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

fcctive  than  pocket-knives.  The  soldiers  dashed 
in  among  the  mass  of  men,  women,  and  children, 
but  rage  seemed  to  have  made  us  all  forget  the 
sense  of  fear.  While  Cossacks  used  sabres  and 
revolvers,  the  strikers  answered  by  stabbing  with 
their  knives  until  overpowered.  It  Avas  sad  to 
see  the  noble  horses  fall,  but  I  felt  little  pity  for 
the  men  who  rode  them.  Eighty  soldiers  were 
killed  in  that  week,  and  two  hundred  wounded — 
how  many  of  the  towns-people  I  cannot  say,  but 
many  times  as  many,  I  am  sure,  for  the  strike 
lasted  a  week. 

"The  government  did  what  was  possible  to 
provoke  disorder,  and  then  took  advantage  of  it 
to  set  the  soldiers  on  us.  It  is  an  old  trick  in 
Russia,  and  always  serves  its  purposes.  This 
time  the  troops  and  police  had  more  to  do  than 
usual,  but  the  end  was  clearly  foreseen.  As  soon 
as  the  smoke  had  cleared  away,  houses  were 
searched  and  arrests  were  made  wholesale.  All 
foreigners  were  promptly  expelled,  and  about 
three  hundred  Germans  escorted  to  the  frontier. 
Being  the  son  of  a  Polish  patriot,  I  was  arrested 
as  a  matter  of  course,  and  condemned  by  a 
drum-head  court-martial  to  Siberia,  along  with  a 
hundred  or  so  of  my  compatriots.  It  so  happened 
that  I  had  taken  no  part  in  the  labor  demonstra- 
tion beyond  being  in  the  streets  in  the  interest 
of  my  factory.  No  investigation  was  made  of 
my  case,  but  it  was  assumed  that  I  had  better 


RUSSIFICATION  317 

leave  Lodz,  and  therefore  I  was  condemned.  My 
wife  was,  of  course,  nearly  distracted,  for  our 
child  is  only  about  a  year  old,  and  banishment 
to  Siberia  meant  for  her  a  punishment  more 
severe  than  death. 

"  But  Russian  tyranny  is  marvellously  tem- 
pered for  those  who  have  ready  money.  My 
wife  had  some  savings  at  home,  and  a  Jew  horse- 
dealer  did  the  rest.  One  night,  as  the  prison- 
ers were  whispering  together  over  the  intending 
tramp  to  Siberia,  the  jailer  came  in,  touched  my 
shoulder,  and  said  I  was  to  follow  him.  We 
passed  into  a  room  where  we  were  alone.  He 
handed  me  a  letter  from  my  wife,  saying  that  I 
should  do  as  I  was  told,  and  trust  the  man  who 
drove  me.  The  words  were  ambiguous,  but  I 
was  satisfied.  My  eyes  were  blindfolded,  my 
arm  seized,  and  I  was  marched  out  of  doors. 
The  way  seemed  long,  and  not  a  word  was  ex- 
changed. At  length  we  stopped,  I  heard  some 
whispering,  some  paper  money  crumpled,  my 
arm  was  seized  by  a  second  person,  the  jailer's 
steps  were  heard  retiring.  Then  my  bandage 
was  at  length  removed,  but  it  was  too  dark  to 
see  anything.  A  voice  in  my  ear  whispered 
'Your  wife  is  in  the  drosky — there  is  also  an 
officer's  cap  and  overcoat — the  guards  will  let 
you  pass — you  can  catch  the  Austrian  express  for 
Warsaw  at  Koluszki — the  rest  you  can  manage 
— all  is  paid  for.'     This  hurried  explanation  took 


3l8         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

place  close  to  where  a  drosky  had  halted.  I 
jumped  in,  the  driver  started  his  three  horses 
into  their  smartest  pace,  and,  for  the  moment,  I 
enjoyed  freedom  and  happiness  with  wife  and 
child.  We  bumped  along  the  road  merrily,  and 
accepted  with  dignity  the  salute  of  the  Cossack 
sentinel,  who  was  too  stupid  to  suspect  any- 
thing wrong  under  my  military  disguise.  He 
naturally  supposed  me  to  be  a  drunken  officer 
indulging  my  thirst  for  pleasure.  And  so  we 
escaped  from  Lodz,  though  it  did  seem  hard  to 
leave  dozens  of  honest  companions  behind,  who 
are  now  on  the  road  to  Siberia,  simply  because 
they  could  not  arrange  to  bribe  their  jailers,  as 
my  wife  did  for  me." 

"But  how  did  you  manage  the  bribery?"  I 
asked. 

"  Nothing  simpler,"  answered  he.  "  I  can  do 
anything  in  Poland,  provided  I  have  one  or  two 
rubles  and  one  or  two  Jews.  The  Jews  under- 
stand brokerage  of  every  kind,  and  if  you  will 
take  the  trouble  to  study  them  and  their  ways, 
you  soon  discover  them  to  be  exceedingly  use- 
ful under  such  a  tyranny  as  the  Russian.  You 
or  I,  for  instance,  might  have  tried  to  bribe  the 
jailer  in  such  a  blunt  and  clumsy  manner  as  to 
have  wasted  not  merely  our  money,  but  time  as 
well.  Or,  what  is  worse,  we  might  have  given 
money  in  advance,  and  have  had  to  pay  double. 
In  my  case  the  Jew  paid  nothing  until  my  body 


RUSSIFICATION  319 

was  delivered  up  at  the  drosky  door,  and  then 
he  paid  only  the  market  price,  charging  me  the 
usual  commission,  perhaps  lOO  per  cent." 

"  But  how  do  you  manage  about  crossing  the 
frontier?"  I  asked. 

"  This  is  not  quite  so  simple,  yet  less  danger- 
ous at  this  point  than  others.  There  is  an  ex- 
tensive smuggling  trade  all  along  the  western 
Russian  border,  one  of  the  popular  articles  being 
tea  from  Konigsberg,  which  is  afterwards  sold 
as  caravan  tea.  Jews  make  the  best  smugglers, 
for  obvious  reasons  ;  they  will  smuggle  anything 
excepting  revolutionary  literature.  Nowadays,  a 
trade  has  sprung  up  that  is  very  profitable — 
smuggling  emigrants  out  of  the  country.  This 
trade  has  assumed  very  large  dimensions  since 
the  accession  of  Alexander  III.,  and  grows  with 
every  effort  to  Russify  his  subjects.  It  is  safe 
to  say  that  at  least  100,000  have  crossed  the 
frontier  at  night  during  the  last  year,  to  say 
nothing  of  those  who  go  by  day  with  legitimate 
passes." 

"  But  cannot  every  one  get  a  pass?"  I  asked. 

"They  can,  by  paying  for  it;  but  it  costs 
about  25  rubles,  which  is  a  great  deal  of  money. 
To  the  peasant  that  represents  two  or  three 
months'  wages,  at  least.  And  even  if  he  has 
that  amount  of  money,  the  police  do  everything 
they  can  to  prevent  his  leaving  the  country. 
They  demand  of  him  all  sorts  of  certificates — of 


320         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

birth,  baptism,  residence,  occupation,  etc.,  which 
the  most  prudent  man  sometimes  loses.  Even  if 
the  poor  devil  has  his  certificates  the  police  are 
sure  to  invent  some  charge  upon  which  the  peas- 
ant has  to  appear  and  pay  a  fine.  In  short,  the 
innocent,  along  with  tiie  guilty,  find  it  easier 
and  cheaper  to  sneak  across  the  border  with  the 
Jew  smugglers,  and  run  the  risk  of  being  shot, 
rather  than  attempt  the  journey  in  a  legal  man- 
ner. I  suppose  you  have  nothing  of  the  kind  in 
America,  where  every  one  is  free?" 

I  had  to  admit  that  the  Chinese  entered  the 
United  States  from  British  Columbia  in  very 
much  the  same  manner,  but  that  on  the  Pacific 
coast  Chinese  were  supposed  to  have  very  wicked 
minds  and  no  souls. 

"  But  how  do  you  make  sure  that  the  smug- 
glers will  not  betray  you  to  the  frontier  police  ?" 
I  asked. 

"  Some  do  get  cheated,"  he  answered,  "  but 
that  is  because  they  are  careless.  When  I  came 
to  Kovno  I  immediately  made  my  agreement 
with  a  ]ew,  who  promised  to  see  me  across  the 
frontier,  and  for  this  I  was  to  pay  ten  rubles. 
But  I  did  not  pay  it  to  him — that  would  have 
been  foolish.  He  took  me  to  a  rabbi,  who  is 
much  respected  here  for  his  honesty,  and  to  him 
I  paid  the  money.  The  rabbi  then  gave  me  a 
token,  a  little  bit  of  glass,  which  I  keep  on  my 
person,  and  only  give  up  to  the  smuggler  after 


RUSSIFICATIOX  32 1 

lie  has  seen  me  safe  over  the  line.  Then  I  sur- 
render my  token  to  the  smuggler,  who  receives 
the  ten  rubles  from  the  rabbi  on  presentation 
of  the  token,  and  not  before.  In  this  way  the 
whole  transaction  is  consummated  without  any 
paper  that  might  prove  awkward  in  case  of  capt- 
ure." 

"But  is  it  not  wrong  for  a  rabbi  to  lend  him- 
self to  smuggling?" 

"  Who  says  anj'thing  about  smuggling  ?  I 
handed  the  rabbi  ten  rubles ;  he  receipted  for 
it  by  handing  me  a  piece  of  glass;  he  pays  the 
ten  rubles  out  again  to  any  one  who  brings  him 
this  identical  bit  of  glass!  There  is  nothing  il- 
legal in  that.  All  the  police  of  Russia  would  fail 
to  hold  him  on  such  a  charge.  But,  besides,  you 
must  remember  that  you  are  in  a  country  where 
no  trade  of  any  kind  can  be  transacted  without 
lying  and  bribing  ;  the  government  leads  the  way 
in  rascality  of  every  kind,  and  if  you  expect  the 
Jews  to  be  outwitted  by  Russian  police,  you  will 
be  much  mistaken. 

Our  little  steamer  had  been  winding  in  and 
out  among  shallows,  dodging  the  great  rafts  that 
come  down  from  the  Minsk  forests,  and  we  were 
Hearing  the  frontier.  The  steamer  suddenly 
turned  towards  the  bank. 

"Good-bye!"  said  my  friend  ;  "perhaps  I  shall 
meet  you  in  America.  Two  smugglers  are  to 
sli[)  off  here  ;  I  go  with  them  ;  we  shall  make  for 


322         THE    DORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

the  woods  and  take  our  chances  when  it  is  dark 
— good-bye !" 

The  steamer  closed  well  with  the  right  bank, 
so  that  the  counter  extended  over  the  land.  A 
long  boat-hook  was  planted  in  the  mud  ;  my 
friend  seized  it  ;  one,  two,  three  were  counted, 
and  with  the  help  of  the  steamer's  mate  he  was 
pushed  off  towards  the  shore,  landing  safely. 
The  two  Jews  followed,  using  the  big  boat-hook 
as  a  vaulting-pole.  The  last  Jew  fell  on  his  back 
in  the  mud;  their  bags  and  bundles  were  tum- 
bled after  them,  the  wheels  revolved  once  more, 
and  in  a  few  moments  the  three  lonely  figures 
were  out  of  sight.  I  asked  the  captain  why  he 
dropped  passengers  at  that  point. 

"Oh,  it  is  near  to  their  village!"  I  thought 
he  winked  as  he  said  this,  but  am  not  quite  sure. 

Later  on,  that  evening,  Remington  and  I  were 
ploughing  through  the  deep  sandy  track  that 
runs  from  Jurburg  to  the  Prussian  frontier.  The 
distance  was  about  six  miles — all  of  it  through  a 
wilderness  of  pine  forest,  in  which  the  only  creat- 
ures we  passed  w^as  a  squadron  of  cavalry  quar- 
tered in  a  long,  straggling  row  of  peasant  huts. 
Our  driver  was  a  venerable  Jew,  in  a  long  gabar- 
dine, curly  hair  falling  upon  his  shoulders,  a  silk 
cap,  a  curl  in  front  of  each  ear,  a  pair  of  top- 
boots. 

"  Smuggling,"  said  he,  "  is  the  only  business 
at  which  we  can  earn  a  living.     The  people  live 


RUSSIFICATION  323 

by  it,  and  it  helps  pay  the  salaries  of  the  police. 
We  sometimes  get  shot,  but  one  must  do  some- 
thing for  a  living.  The  Russian  government 
compels  all  the  Jews  to  live  only  in  a  small  part 
of  Russia.  The  struggle  for  life  is  terrible  here 
— so  terrible  that  plenty  of  men  spend  theirs 
carrying  loads  in  and  out  of  Prussia." 

"Are  there  many  soldiers  on  the  frontier?" 
I  asked. 

"  They  are  so  thick,"  he  said,  "  that  I  wonder 
they  do  not  shoot  one  another  by  mistake.  Ev- 
ery thousand  feet  brings  you  to  a  picket  close  to 
the  line;  then  two  miles  behind  that  is  a  cordon 
made  of  two  foot-soldiers  to  every  one  cavalry- 
man, and  eight  miles  back  of  the  frontier  is  a 
complete  line  of  Cossack  or  dragoon  cavalry ; 
so  you  see,  even  if  the  first  line  is  evaded,  there 
are  two  more  left  to  catch  you." 

Suddenly,  in  the  midst  of  the  forest,  we  came 
upon  a  log-hut,  in  front  of  which  were  two  high 
posts.  The  road,  or  sand-trail,  was  here  barred 
by  a  heavy  chain,  and  a  soldier  mounted  guard 
by  its  side.  Remington  and  I  were  ordered  to 
stop,  enter  the  hut,  have  our  baggage  searched, 
and  our  passports  scrutinized.  As  this  occupied 
an  hour,  I  had  ample  time  to  note  that  every 
passenger  arriving  from  Prussia  not  merely  had 
his  baggage  searched,  but  his  very  person  ex- 
amined ;  under  his  armpits,  down  his  back,  to 
his  vcr}-  skin.      I    had  seen  Chinamen  treated  in 


324        THE    PORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

this  brutal  manner  on  landing  in  San  Francisco 
before  the  passing  of  the  Exclusion  Bill,  but  I 
had  not  expected  to  find  it  elsewhere,  not  even 
in  Russia.  As  Remington  and  I  were  travelling 
on  "special"  passports,  signed  by  the  secretary 
of  state,  and  as  Russia  had  just  received  four 
cargoes  of  wheat  as  a  present  from  our  country 
to  her  starving  people,  we  had  looked  forward  to 
some  consideration  at  the  hands  of  the  officials  ; 
but,  so  far  as  I  could  gather,  they  had  never 
heard  of  America  or  our  cargoes ;  the  censor, 
perhaps,  regarded  both  as  suspicious.  One  of  the 
customs  officials  spoke  bad  German  and  meant  to 
be  polite  ;  the  chief,  however,  had  the  features 
of  a  Persian,  was  disfigured  by  scrofula,  and  had 
the  amiability  of  an  Apache.  The  only  sign  of 
happiness  he  gave  was  when  the  report  of  a  rifle 
came  through  the  woods. 

"Another  Jew,"  he  said,  and  grinned  the  grin 
of  a  mean-spirited  brute  who  knew  that  when  a 
smuggler  was  shot  part  of  his  pack  fell  to  the 
share  of  the  customs  official. 

That  shot  struck  my  Polish  friend  —  nothing 
but  a  flesh  wound,  however.  The  two  Jews 
helped  him  on,  he  was  close  to  the  frontier,  and 
three  days  afterwards  I  shook  hands  with  him  at 
Konigsberg,  on  his  way  to  Hamburg.  He  was 
beaming  with  happiness,  his  wife  and  child  were 
with  him,  his  arm  was  in  a  sling,  but  doing  well. 
He  was  sustained  by  the  thought  that  at  last  he 


RUSSIFICATION  325 

was  beyond  the  reach  of  a  Russian  poHceman, 
and  would  soon  be  in  a  country  where  Russifica- 
tion  was  unknown. 

Shortly  after  the  Polish  insurrection  of  1830, 
in  which  the  German  provinces  had  no  share, 
the  Czar  Nicholas  concluded  to  Russify  on  a 
large  scale,  and  sent,  therefore,  as  chief  of  the 
whole  educational  system  of  the  Baltic  provinces, 
an  illiterate  Russian  general.  He  began  with 
the  university  at  Dorpat,*  the  model  university 
of  the  country,  and  ordered  (1835)  that  hence- 
forth professors  and  students  should  appear  only 
in  military  uniform.  Dorpat  was  founded  in  the 
same  year  as  Yale,  and  has  been  conducted  to 
this  day  in  the  same  enlightened  spirit.  Im- 
agine President  Dwight,  at  New  Haven,  receiv- 
ing from  the  New  York  Board  of  Aldermen  an 
order  to  appear  henceforth  only  in  the  regalia  of 
St.  Patrick;  it  could  not  produce  a  greater  sen- 
sation than  was  produced  when  this  great  Ger- 
man seat  of  learning  was  handed  over  into  the 
coarse  hands  of  a  professional  soldier  for  prompt 
Russification.  Henceforth  the  Russian  language 
was  obligatory,  and  the  appointment  of  profess- 
ors rested  no  longer  with  the  faculty,  but  with 
the  military  director. 

So  much   for  the  cause  of  popular  education. 


*  Since  writing  tliis  the  very  name  l)(irpat  has  been  suppressed, 
and  a  Russian  one  ordered  in  its  stead. 


^26         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

The  seed  planted  by  that  Russian  general  has 
been  nursed  and  watered  by  others  equall}'  hos- 
tile to  German  culture,  and  the  laws  passed  in 
the  last  few  years  should  surprise  no  one  familiar 
with  the  spirit  of  laws  passed  during  the  last  fifty 
or  one  hundred  years. 

The  religious  Russification  has  a  history  al- 
most as  painful  as  that  of  Dorpat  University  and 
the  schools,  but  want  of  space  forbids  my  en- 
tering on  it  here.  The  whole  country  is  Protes- 
tant from  time  immemorial,  and  jogged  along 
very  happily  with  its  Lutheran  clergymen,  who 
felt  secure  from  orthodox  intrigue  because  they 
trusted  the  promises  of  successive  czars.  One 
fine  day  in  1836,  however,  news  came  that  Riga, 
the  chief  commercial  town  of  the  Baltic  prov- 
inces, was  to  have  an  orthodox  bishop,  and  that  a 
seminary  for  Greek  priests  was  also  to  be  erected 
near  by.  To  be  sure,  there  were  scarcely  any 
orthodox  worshippers,  but  the  priests  were  confi- 
dent that,  with  the  police  and  the  name  of  the 
czar  behind  them,  they  would  soon  make  the 
Lutherans  feel  their  power — and  they  did. 

The  year  1841  came.  There  had  been  three 
years  of  very  bad  harvest ;  the  peasants  in  re- 
mote villages  were  in  a  desperate  condition ; 
there  was  much  discontent  on  all  sides,  and,  as  is 
usual  in  such  a  state  of  things,  the  fault  is  al- 
ways laid  at  the  door  of  the  landlord,  or  the  em- 
ployer  of   labor.      When    things   were    at    their 


RUSSIFICATION  327 

worst,  the  Greek  priests  sent  crafty  emissaries 
throughout  the  distressed  regions,  much  as  the 
Jesuits  do  in  China.  These  told  the  ignorant 
peasants  that  the  czar  had  milHons  of  acres  of  rich 
land  in  the  warm  South  for  all  those  who  were 
loyal  to  him,  and  believed  as  he  believed.  Pretty 
soon  peasants  commenced  to  appear  in  the  town, 
applying  to  the  authorities  for  free  farms  in  the 
promised  land  of  sunshine  and  deep  soil.  But 
the  secular  authorities  knew  nothing  of  the  trick 
by  which  the  Greek  priests  had  lured  them  from 
their  countr)',  and,  of  course,  told  them  they  had 
been  fooled,  and  must  go  home.  The  poor  peo- 
ple had,  in  many  cases,  sold  everything  in  order 
to  make  the  journey,  and  felt  desperate  when 
told  they  had  been  duped.  As  they  turned 
away  from  the  town  -  hall,  however,  they  were 
steered  by  a  priestly  decoy  to  the  orthodox 
quarter ;  the  promise  of  land  was  repeated — all 
they  were  to  do  was  to  be  baptized  in  the  faith 
of  the  czar.  The  priest  told  them  how  wicked 
it  was  to  have  a  different  religion  from  that  of 
the  emperor,  and  that  all  those  who  held  the 
orthodox  faith  had  rather  a  good  time  in  this 
world,  and  a  sure  thing  in  the  world  to  come. 

Now  all  such  propaganda  would  in  ordinary 
times  have  been  wasted,  but  after  three  years  of 
hard  times,  and  with  minds  unsettled  by  prom- 
ises of  fertile  lands,  the  orthodox  priests  had  an 
opportunity  of  the  most  exceptional  kind.      The 


328  •      THE    RORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

ari^ument  which,  however,  swept  away  their  con- 
scientious doubts  most  completely  was  that  the 
czar  personally  desired  them  all  to  become  of 
his  religion,  and  that  to  be  unorthodox  was  to  be 
disloyal  to  their  ruler.  There  were  few  Lith- 
uanian peasants  who  could  resist  such  an  appeal 
to  their  patriotism,  for  to  such  a  one  the  czar's 
wish  is  law.  To  explain  the  conversions  that 
became  very  numerous  in  the  next  few  years,  it 
must  also  be  understood  that,  whereas  the  or- 
thodox priests  moved  about  with  the  insolent 
assurance  of  representing  the  czar  and  his  po- 
lice, the  Lutheran  clergy  had  no  prestige  beyond 
the  province  from  which  they  drew  their  congre- 
gation and  meagre  pay.  By  the  law  of  Russia 
they  were  not  an  independent  power  —  merely 
a  tolerated  sect.  The  large  mass  of  Lithua- 
nian peasants  were  Lutheran  from  habit ;  few  of 
them  understood  the  grounds  of  their  belief,  as 
does  the  average  New-Englander.  Among  these 
simple  people  went  orthodox  agents,  who  gave 
them  the  assurance  that  the  Lutheran  worship 
was  substantially  the  same  as  the  Greek,  and  that 
in  changing  they  were  only  drawing  nearer  to 
their  great  father,  the  czar.  And,  indeed,  during 
the  early  period  of  the  orthodox  propaganda,  say 
from  1836  to  1846,  the  Greek  priests  allowed 
their  converts  from  Protestantism  to  retain  their 
Lutheran  hymns,  even  to  retain  the  reading  of  a 
sermon  ;  but  this  was  done  only  as  a  decoy  for 


RUSSIFICATION  329 

the  others.  The  peasants  went  among  their  hes- 
itating neighbors  saying  that  they  had  lost  none 
of  their  old  worship,  but,  on  the  contrary,  had 
now  a  much  easier  time  of  it. 

The  reader  exclaims  :  "  But  why  did  not  the 
Lutherans  preach  against  the  orthodox  heresy  ?" 
Tliey  tried  to,  but  their  mouths  were  stopped 
by  the  orthodox  police.  Clergymen  who  dared 
criticise  the  Greek  church,  or  even  to  enlighten 
their  people  upon  the  distinction  between  Prot- 
estantism and  orthodoxy,  were  sent  to  jail.  The 
Lutheran  Church  had  its  catechism  suppressed 
by  the  police.  Wherever  the  Lutheran  Church 
came  in  conflict  with  the  orthodox  interests,  the 
Russian  police  saw  to  it  that  the  czar's  cause  did 
not  suffer.  The  czar  had  the  censor  on  his  side, 
so  that  while  his  coreligionists  might  say  what 
they  chose  against  the  religion  of  Luther,  it  was 
made  a  crime  to  make  a  defence  against  these 
attacks. 

The  peasants  found  that  the  promises  of  rich 
lands  were  not  kept,  and  that  the  orthodox 
priests  were  as  greedy  for  money  as  other  men. 
Many  wanted  to  get  back  into  their  old  Church, 
but  it  was  too  late.  They  had  forfeited  the  right 
to  think  for  themselves  ;  they  were  flogged  if 
they  attended  a  Lutheran  worship,  and  it  was 
a  criminal  act  for  a  Lutheran  clergyman  to  allow 
one  of  his  former  flock  to  return  to  him — to  even 
let  him  attend  service.     If  one  of  these  newly- 


33°         I'HE    r.ORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

flecl[^ed  orthodox  peasantry  married,  the  czar's 
Church  claimed  all  the  children,  even  though  the 
mother  were  Protestant,  and  though  the  father 
desired  his  children  to  become  Lutheran. 

The  little  picture  I  have  given  is  matter  of  his- 
tory— it  would  seem  to  belong  to  the  sixteenth 
century — yet  it  is  a  perfect  reflection  of  what  is 
going  on  to-day  in  the  most  civilized  portion  of 
the  czar's  dominion. 

The  ccnsorsliip  has  played  an  important  part 
in  the  Russification  of  these  provinces  —  even 
more  injurious  a  part  than  in  Russia.  Shortly 
after  the  French  Revolution  the  czar  determined 
to  stamp  out  all  independent  thinking,  and  com- 
menced his  work  in  the  Baltic  provinces  by  sup- 
pressing a  volume  of  Protestant  sermons  by  M. 
Sontagg,  a  preacher  who  corresponded  in  Riga 
to  Spurgeon  in  London  or  Beecher  in  Ameri- 
ca. Another  clergyman  was  condemned  to  be 
flogged,  and  to  hard  labor  in  the  penitentiary,  be- 
cause in  his  library  were  found  the  works  of  La- 
fontaine.  In  1800  all  books,  without  exception, 
were  shut  out  from  the  Baltic  provinces,  on  the 
ground  that  there  were  already  enough  for  prac- 
tical purposes.  It  was  a  hard  law  on  those  who 
had  ordered  books  and  paid  in  advance,  but  no 
exception  was  made.  Fortunately,  it  lasted  only 
four  years,  when  the  censor  once  more  appeared, 
and  with  it  comparative  liberty.  To  give  one  an 
idea  of  how  much  is  meant  by  this,  it  need  only 


RUSSIFICATION  33 1 

be  said  that,  under  Nicholas,  no  paper  was  al- 
lowed to  discuss  foreign  affairs  ;  the  utmost  al- 
lowed was  to  copy  what  had  already  appeared  in 
the  government  gazette.  No  paper  could  men- 
tion any  item  of  news  about  the  court  without 
first  obtaining  permission  of  the  czar's  chief  pal- 
ace servant .  no  news  of  any  kind  could  appear 
without  first  being  submitted  to  the  chief  of  the 
department  whom  it  might  affect  directly  or 
indirectly.  If  a  ship  was  wrecked  the  minis- 
try of  marine  must  be  consulted  ;  if  a  pocket 
was  picked,  the  police ;  damage  to  crops  comes 
within  the  province  of  the  agricultural  depart- 
ment ;  when  a  military  review  takes  place,  noth- 
ing must  be  said  until  the  secretary  of  war  has 
been  consulted.  The  censor  is  not  materially 
different  to-day,  let  us  add  in  parenthesis.  Here 
is  an  illustration  : 

A  distinguished  political  writer,  the  editor  of 
the  leading  newspaper  in  western  Russia,  lately 
wrote  an  article  (August,  1892)  criticising  Bis- 
marck for  his  obstructionistic  attitude  towards 
the  German  emperor  and  Caprivi.  The  writer 
is  a  man  whose  word  I  respect,  and  he  told  me 
the  story  at  my  own  table,  immediately  on  ar- 
rival across  the  Russian  border. 

When  he  learned  that  his  article  had  been 
suppressed  he  was  very  indignant,  and  there- 
fore called  upon  the  president  of  the  "  censure," 
whom  he  knew  very  well,  and  who  had  always 


332         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

treated  him  with  great  consideration,  owing  to 
his  high  social  and  Hterary  position.  The  con- 
versation was  about  as  follows  : 

Azitho}' :  "  I  know  that  I  have  no  right  to  ask  your  excellency 
about  a  suppressed  work,  but  if  your  excellency  would  be  so 
good  as  to  make  an  exception  in  my  case — " 

Censor :  "  But,  my  dear  friend,  why  in  the  world  should  you 
to-day  write  an  article  against  Bismarck  ?" 

Author:  "  Because,  your  excellency,  I  am  a  Monarchist,  and 
Bismarck  seeks  to  undermine  the  influence  of  a  monarch  !" 

Censor  :  "  It  never  struck  me  from  that  standpoint.  But  why 
do  you  not  show  your  love  for  monarchy  by  studying  our  gracious 
majesty,  the  czar  ?" 

Author:  "Because,  as  your  excellency  is  aware,  the  police 
forbid  my  writing  anything  whatsoever  about  the  czar.  I  may 
only  copy  the  Court  Circular." 

Censor:  "  H'm,  true,  I  did  not  think  of  that.  But  you  cannot 
print  the  article  against  Bismarck." 

Author  :  "  But  would  not  your  excellency  kindly  hint  the  rea- 
son, so  that  in  future  my  pen  may  conform  more  fully  with  your 
excellency's  views  ?" 

Censor:  "  No,  I  should  not  ;  but  still,  as  an  old  friend,  you 
may  as  well  know:  the  government  regards  your  criticism  of 
Bismarck  as  an  indirect  approval  of  the  German  emperor.  Now, 
you  must  know  that  his  majesty  the  czar  does  not  desire  to 
have  the  German  emperor  praised,  directly  or  indirectly.  Good- 
morning  !'' 

My  friend  returns  to  Russia  in  a  few  days,  and 
as  I  do  not  wish  to  hear  of  his  being  sent  to 
jail  or  Siberia,  I  am  forced  to  keep  to  myself 
many  details  that  would  put  the  police  on  his 
track.  It  is  sufficiently  illustrative  of  Russian 
journalism,  however,  to  know  that  nothing  can 


RUSSIFICATION  333 

come  to  print  about  the  German  emperor  that 
does  not  abuse  him  personally,  or  at  least  praise 
his  enemies. 

Not  long  since,  on  the  occasion  of  dedicating 
a  Protestant  church  in  the  Baltic  provinces,  the 
clergyman,  thinking  thereby  to  emphasize  the  tol- 
erance of  the  community,  as  well  as  the  friendly 
ties  uniting  all  sections,  used  these  words : 

"  It  is  an  elevating  thought  that,  not  merely 
Protestants,  but  orthodox  and  Jews,  have  helped 
us  in  the  building  of  this  edifice,  by  giving  us 
money  contributions." 

The  censor  regarded  this  sentiment  as  an  in- 
sult to  the  czar's  coreligionists,  and  suppressed 
the  report  of  the  affair  in  the  Dorpat  news- 
paper. On  another  occasion,  a  statistical  table 
had  been  prepared  with  great  care,  discussing 
the  future  careers  of  students  in  the  Baltic 
schools  according  to  nationalities.  The  censor 
suppressed  it  because  Russians  appeared  unfa- 
vorably as  compared  with  those  of  German  ex- 
traction. This  is  as  comical  as  though  the  ne- 
groes of  Louisiana  caused  the  suppression  of 
our  decennial  census  because  the  whites  of  Mas- 
sachusetts appeared  to  advantage. 

Imagine  now  the  happiness  of  the  theatre- 
manager  who  makes  himself  responsible  for  the 
rent  of  the  building  and  the  wages  of  his  players. 
He  dares  not  risk  much  in  the  purchase  of  a 
new  play,  for  before  it  can  be  produced  it  must 


334         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

be  sent  to  St.  Petersburg  for  approval,  and  after 
it  is  performed  it  is  still  subject  to  be  suppressed 
at  any  moment  if  a  costume,  a  gesture,  an  in- 
flection, a  local  hit,  or  any  trifle  should,  in  the 
mind  of  the  local  police,  be  calculated  to  pro- 
duce unfavorable  comparison  between  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  czar  and  that  of  any  one  else. 
Out  of  two  hundred  plays  sent  by  one  theatre- 
director  alone,  in  Mitau,  scarcely  twenty  came 
back  with  the  requisite  license,  and  it  took  many 
months  to  accomplish  even  this  much.  Did 
the  Russian  police  act  in  this  manner  because 
they  consider  theatres  a  means  of  improper  rec- 
reation ?  Not  in  the  least.  The  Russian  police 
encourage  licentiousness  to  any  extent,  from 
dram-shops  to  houses  of  ill-fame.  They  seek 
their  friends  in  the  conquered  countries,  not 
among  the  respectable  and  constructive  ele- 
ments of  society,  but  among  the  dissolute  and 
degraded.  The  censorship  they  exercise  is  not 
to  keep  from  publicity  impure  sentiments  or  in- 
decent suggestions ;  these  are  to  be  found  in 
every  resort  of  Russian  ofificials.  What  the  cen- 
sor does  not  allow,  however,  is  any  public  ex- 
pression that  savors  of  reasoning.  One  play  is  for- 
bidden because  it  suggests  nationality ;  another 
because  it  suggests  patriotism — both  obviously 
inflammatory  concepts  in  the  minds  of  oppressed 
people.  A  play  referring  favorably  either  to  the 
Protestant   or  Catholic  clergy  cannot   be   toler- 


RUSSIFICATION  ^;^^ 

ated  because  it  suggests  comparison  with  that 
of  the  czar.  No  play  can  be  produced  calcu- 
lated to  weaken  respect  for  the  monarch,  his 
ministers,  his  police,  or  his  officials  ;  in  fact,  we 
can  hardly  imagine  a  modern  farce  which  the 
Russian  censor  would  not  be  able  to  construe 
as  dangerous  to  the  peace  of  what  he  is  pleased 
to  regard  as  society.  There  is  hardly  a  play  of 
Shakespeare  that  could  be  played  in  Riga  to- 
day, to  say  nothing  of  the  comedies  that  sparkle 
at  theatres  like  Daly's  in  New  York.  Every 
night,  in  every  theatre  of  the  Baltic  provinces, 
there  sits  a  government  spy  to  report  if  any- 
thing is  done,  either  on  or  off  the  stage,  calcu- 
lated to  strengthen  German  or  weaken  Russian 
influence.  Under  these  circumstances,  is  it  likely 
that  dramatic  art  should  flourish?  Yet,  on  the 
Baltic,  as  in  Poland,  the  people  have  ceased  pro- 
testing on  this  point — they  have  begun  to  an- 
ticipate the  time  when  their  very  mother-tongue 
will  be  forbidden,  not  only  in  the  school,  but  in 
the  pulpit  and  on  the  stage. 

The  aggravating  feature  of  Russian  ccMisorship 
is  not  merely  that  the  censors  are,  as  a  rule, 
grossly  illiterate  people,  but  that  the  honestly 
patriotic  writer  is  never  protected  against  ca- 
price. For  instance,  one  article  discussed  the 
life  of  the  agitator  Alexander  Ilerzen,  considered 
him  a  bad  man,  an  enthusiast,  but  still  considered 
that  he  was  honest.     For  allowing  him   this  one 


336         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

attribute  the  police  of  St.  Petersburg  were  indig- 
nant. Another  paper  in  its  cokimns  stated  that 
the  Roman  revolution  progressed  bravely.  Down 
came  the  censor,  and  remarked  that  bravery  in 
connection  with  any  revolution  was  ridiculous 
and  inflammatory.  In  the  university  town  of 
Dorpat  the  censor  forbade  the  publication  of 
the  programme  of  the  Communists  of  Paris  in 
1848,  although  the  censors  in  St.  Petersburg  had 
passed  it  there.  The  reason  was  that,  while  good 
Russians  might  hear  such  news,  it  might  prove 
inflammatory  in  a  province  of  persecuted  Ger- 
mans. 

A  Jewish  pawnbroker  advertised  a  sale  — 
among  other  things  of  a  cJuircJi  organ.  Censor 
struck  out  the  word  cJiurcJi,  substituting  instead 
the  word  large.  Reason  given  was  that  the  pres- 
ence of  a  church  organ  at  a  Jew  sale  was  calculat- 
ed to  undermine  respect  for  religion.  Another 
paper  in  Mitau  announced  the  arrival  of  the 
governor- general  in  the  same  list  with  those  of 
other  notable  arrivals.  Censor  struck  the  name 
out,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  calculated  to  de- 
crease the  dignity  of  the  czar's  government  if  a 
high  official's  name  appeared  along  with  that  of 
ordinary  people. 

An  article  on  France  declared  the  word  Jac- 
qiicrie  as  meaning  a  species  of  peasant  rebellion. 
The  censor  struck  the  whole  passage  out  as  be- 
ing superfluous — as  suggesting  disorder. 


RUSSIFICATION  337 

Another  paper  stated  that  crabs  turned  red 
when  boiled,  turning  red  with  shame  at  having 
gone  backward  so  much.  The  censor  struck 
this  out,  for  to  every  German  reader  the  crab 
could  only  refer  to  the  government  of  the  Rus- 
sian czar !  An  interesting  admission  under  any 
circumstances. 

Police  censorship  is  much  stricter  to-day  than 
it  was  when  Prussia  and  Russia  joined  hands  in 
hunting  down  what  they  were  jointly  pleased  to 
consider  political  heresy.  In  the  early  part  of  this 
century  Prussian  ofificial  newspapers  were  regard- 
ed in  Russia  as  quite  fit  for  perusal,  even  by 
people  in  the  Baltic  provinces.  To-day,  however, 
the  literature  of  Germany  is  regarded  as  more 
deadly  to  Russian  peace  than  even  that  of  re- 
publican France,  to  say  nothing  of  England  and 
America. 

The  memorandum-book  of  a  censor,  now  dead, 
came  curiously  to  light  on  our  side  of  the  fron- 
tier a  short  time  since.  He  ap"^ears  to  have 
been  an  honest  man,  and  in  his  dying  moments 
so  pricked  by  a  sense  of  his  past  wickedness 
that  by  way  of  smoothing  his  path  into  eternity 
he  resolved  to  expose  some  of  the  deviltry  of 
which  he  was  made  a  tool.  One  fine  day  he  was 
sent,  in  company  with  a  police  colonel  from  St. 
Petersburg  to  Riga,  with  orders  to  inspect  every 
library,  and  see  that  nothing  dangerous  was  be- 
ing read  in  this  commercial  centre  of  the  Baltic 


338         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

provinces.  Riga  is  a  seaport  town  with  175,000 
intelligent  and  industrious  people.  It  has  a  fa- 
mous polytechnic  or  scientific  school,  three  col- 
leges, and  many  schools  and  learned  societies. 
This  fact  made  it  appear  the  more  dangerous  to 
th^  "  Third  Section  "  in  St.  Petersburg,  and  it  was 
determined  to  suddenly  search  the  town,  just  as 
the  rooms  of  students  and  editors  are  periodi- 
cally broken  into  in  Moscow  or  Odessa.  The 
police  mission  was,  of  course,  kept  a  secret,  and 
the  governor  at  Riga  was  ordered  to  put  all  the 
local  police  agencies  into  action,  in  order  that  as 
much  should  be  discovered  as  possible,  A  raid 
was  made  at  the  same  time  upon  the  university 
town  of  Dorpat,  the  centre  of  intellectual  activ- 
ity not  only  in  the  Baltic  provinces  but  of  all 
Russia.  Its  library  has  200,000  volumes,  its  fac- 
ulties have  compared  favorably  with  those  of 
Heidelberg  or  Gottingen,  its  astronomical  ob- 
servatory is  one  of  the  best  in  the  world.  If 
any  spot  migM  be  regarded  as  deserving  fair 
treatment,  even  in  Russia,  Dorpat  surely  was,  for 
its  constitution  had  been  repeatedly  guaranteed 
by  the  solemn  promises  of  successive  czars  since 
Peter  the  Great. 

But  the  fanatical  zeal  for  Russification  would 
not  be  limited  by  mere  promises,  and  so  it  hap- 
pened that,  one  night  in  July,  at  exactly  eleven 
o'clock,  the  censor  and  police  agent  arrived,  and 
immediately  placed  their  seal  upon  the  doors  of 


RUSSIFICATION  339 

the  three  chief  booksellers,  as  well  as  those  of 
the  leading  circulating  library.  The  book-dealers 
not  only  had  to  have  their  places  closed  while 
each  title-page  was  being  scrutinized  and  com- 
pared with  the  list  of  permitted  or  forbidden 
books,  but  they  had  to  furnish  the  police  with 
their  cash-books  and  ledgers,  to  tell  what  books 
they  had  sold,  what  were  ordered,  and  for  ivhoni. 
It  turned  out,  in  the  course  of  a  fortnight,  that 
over  one  thousand  books  were  regarded  as  either 
forbidden,  suspected,  or  unknown  to  the  czar's 
censors.  But,  worse  than  that,  about  a  hundred 
forbidden  books  had  been  sold.  The  police  now 
ransacked  every  private  house  to  get  these  back  ; 
the  booksellers  had  to  pay  a  heavy  fine,  and  the 
confiscated  books  were  carted  to  St.  Petersburg 
to  the  library  of  the  "Third  Section."  Remem- 
bering that  Dorpat  is  a  quiet  little  seat  of  learn- 
ing, with  a  population  of  barely  30,000,  we  may 
imagine  the  indignation  caused  by  closing  every 
book-shop  for  two  weeks,  and  having  the  houses 
of  men  of  letters  ransacked  by  policemen.  And 
what  were  the  books  which  the  czar  regarded  as 
poisonous  to  the  orthodox  mind?  Among  them 
we  find  those  of  Louis  Blanc,  Proudhon,  Lamar- 
tine,  Heine,  and,  as  the  wickedest  of  all,  Thicrs's 
famous  history  of  the  Napoleonic  era,  The  Coii- 
stilate  and  Empire.  Imagine  the  pleasure  of 
literary  life  in  a  country  where  it  is  a  crime  to 
read  such  books.     It  is  needless  to  say  that  the 


34° 


THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 


police  hunted  particularly  for  every  book  that 
did  not  speak  well  of  Russian  government. 

On  the  9th  of  July  the  literary  inquisition  was 
opened  in  Riga.  There  were  200,000  volumes 
to  inspect,  2300  business  letters  to  read,  and 
5500  invoices  to  compare.  From  the  9th  to  the 
20th  the  police  occupied  every  book-shop  in  the 
Baltic  capital,  and  finally  carted  off  to  St.  Peters- 
burg 2042  confiscated  works — among  these  619 
not  exactly  forbidden,  but  simply  confiscated 
because  the  local  censor  knew  nothing  about 
them,  and  therefore  presumed  them  to  be  he- 
retical. Oddly  enough,  many  of  the  books  confis- 
cated had  been  bought  under  orders  for  Russian 
seats  of  learning  in  the  interior,  Kieff  University 
among  others.  The  St.  Petersburg  police  were 
furious  at  hearing  that  2000  dangerous  books 
had  been  found  in  Riga,  and  secured  from  the 
czar  an  order  to  close  every  book-shop  in  the 
town.  This  meant  bankruptcy.  The  blockade 
lasted  four  months — only  on  Christmas  Eve  did 
the  czar  suspend  his  judgment,  too  late,  how- 
ever, for  the  sellers  to  profit  by  the  general 
Christmas  trade.  In  suspending  the  measure,  how- 
ever, he  ordered  the  arrest  of  every  bookseller, 
pending  a  police  investigation,  which  lasted  two 
years  and  one  month,  after  which  they  were  all 
set  at  liberty  upon  paying  a  handsome  fine. 

Does  not  one's  blood  boil  at  reading  of  such 
disgraceful  government — all  done  in  the  name  of 


RUSSIFICATION  341 

Russification  ?  Think  of  the  hundreds  of  school- 
children who  cannot  buy  the  books  for  their 
classes;  the  professional  men  who  find  them- 
selves incapable  of  receiving  the  latest  contribu- 
tion in  their  particular  department.  The  Chinese 
emperor  who  built  the  Great  Wall  destroyed  all 
the  books  he  could  find  in  order  that  future  ages 
might  regard  him  as  the  first  man  in  histor}-. 
Russian  monarchs  act  in  an  even  more  drastic 
manner — they  do  not  only  suppress  the  books 
that  have  been,  but  take  equal  pains  that  their 
own  generation  shall  produce  none  worth  read- 
ing. 

And  what  were  these  2000  books  confiscat- 
ed at  Riga?  Among  them  were  131  copies 
of  Thiers's  History  of  the  Consulate  and  Em- 
pire, and  94  Thiers's  History  of  the  Revolution. 
There  were  91  volumes  of  Lamartine's  History 
of  the  Girondists,  and  652  parts  of  a  popular 
encyclopaedia.  Here  alone  are  1000  out  of  the 
2004  accounted  for — all  confiscated  as  being 
dangerous  to  the  czar's  government — yet  books 
deemed  suitable  for  the  library  of  a  civilized 
student  in  any  other  part  of  the  world. 

Had  the  censor  and  his  policemen  confined 
themselves  to  legal  procedure  the  outrage  upon 
decency  would  have  been  great,  but  in  the  in- 
stance I  cite  even  the  Russian  governor-general 
protested  to  the  czar  that  every  form  of  law  was 
trampled  underfoot,  that  honest  and  leading  cit- 


342         THE    BORDERLAND    OF    CZAR    AND    KAISER 

izens  were  condemned  and  punished  without  a 
trial,  and  that  their  private  papers  were  ransacked 
by  the  poHce  without  the  slightest  legal  warrant. 
His  protest  accomplished  nothing,  unless  we  re- 
gard as  clemency  two  years'  arrest,  a  fine,  and  a 
four  months'  closing  of  shop. 

And  all  this  took  place,  and  is  daily  repeating 
itself,  in  a  land  living  under  the  most  solemn 
guarantees  from  successive  Russian  monarchs  ! 

The  key-note  is"  Russification  "  in  school, 
Church,  university,  and  public  service.  The  year 
before  France  and  Germany  went  to  war,  or,  to 
be  accurate,  on  the  15th  of  October,  1869,  the 
adjutant  of  Alexander  II.,  General  Albedinsky, 
formulated  a  programme  for  checking  the  Prot- 
estant and  German  aspirations  of  these  prov- 
inces— concluding  with  the  advice  that  the  czar 
should  not  be  bound  by  the  pledges  of  his  an- 
cestors, but — "  That  the  Baltic  provinces  should 
be  melted  into  the  Russian  empire  uncondition- 
ally and  irrevocably."  This  has  been  Russian 
policy  here  as  in  Poland,  and  it  has  been  grow- 
ing in  severity  and  brutality  during  the  years 
that  Bismarck  sought  to  make  his  people  and  his 
emperor  believe  that  Russia  was  a  good  friend  to 
Germany  and  German  civilization.  The  cries  of 
persecuted  Germans  found  no  echo  in  the  heart  of 
the  Iron  Chancellor — he  was  persecuting  his  own 
enemies  so  hotly  that  he  had  no  time  to  attend 
to  the  sufferings  of  those  beyond  his  frontier. 


RUSSIFICATION  343 

Bismarck,  happily  for  his  country,  is  no  longer 
the  German  government,  and  there  are  signs  in 
the  poHtical  firmament  indicating  that  the  Ger- 
many of  to-day  will  not  remain  much  longer  si- 
lent while  fellow  -  creatures  of  kindred  blood, 
language,  and  faith  are  crying  desperately  for 
help,  only  a  few  miles  from  their  eastern  towns. 
The  German  emperor  has  already  notified  his 
neighbors  that  humanity  has  upon  him  claims 
quite  as  sacred  as  those  of  statecraft,  and  every 
man  who  loves  liberty  must  surely  long  for  the 
moment  when  he  shall  demand  an  explanation 
in  St.  Petersburg  of  the  long  series  of  diabolical 
acts  of  official  cruelty  perpetrated  in  the  name  of 
"  Russification," 


THE    END 


OCT  3  0  1980 

DATE  DUE 

'rnn     in  ki  n  n 

^M<«« 

m  JAN  2  0 

i98i 

ji!;l    U  19 

BS  . 

CAVLORO 

»R1NTC0IN  U.S.*. 

DK26    B59 

Bigelow,    Houltney,     I855-J9b4 

The  borderland  of  czar  and 
kaiser. 


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